Rarely in history has the Palace of Westminster received as much attention as it did in the three and a half years leading up to Britain's exit from the European Union (EU).
Elected officials inflicting a triple snub on the "deal" of their Prime Minister, who, weary, will eventually resign; a Speaker of the House of Commons enjoying a nap in the middle of a sitting, a howling "speaker" "Order! " to restore calm, another prime minister forced to dismiss 21 deputies from his own camp after losing control of the parliamentary agenda … Between the referendum of June 23, 2016 and the effective realization of Brexit, scheduled for January 31 at midnight, the green benches of the British Parliament will have presented the world with an inexhaustible inventive spectacle.
However, beyond the spectacle, British political life almost stopped during these 1,318 days. Obsessed with Brexit and paralyzed by the country's division, MPs and ministers have given up making any major decisions on the other issues that traditionally occupy the political agenda.
Theresa May, who promised when she arrived at Downing Street to carry out Brexit while ending the "Burning injustices" which had served as a breeding ground for anti-European populism, failed on both counts. The Prime Minister devoted a great deal of her energy to negotiating a deal with the 27 to leave the EU, then having it accepted by Parliament, before throwing in the towel in June 2019.
Many large construction projects postponed
His ministers had to "prioritize" the reforms underway in their respective sectors to work on the concrete consequences of Brexit – from fishing to air traffic control, via the regulation of chemicals – and adapt British law, suddenly relieved of the framework European.
At the Ministry of the Economy, the mobilization of a large number of officials to prepare for the possibility of a "no deal" has torpedoed the rare large-scale projects launched by the May government. Thus, the gigantic plan to modernize the tax administration had to be postponed due to the lack of human resources to implement it. As well as the end of post-crisis budgetary austerity, solemnly announced in the fall of 2018 and postponed sine die, in particular because of the lack of officials available to prepare the new budgets.
