Let's just remind ourselves how it's going Perhaps "some fruits in ten years" wouldn't have made such a nice red bus slogan. Matthew Parris in the Times, of course he had the temerity to predict much of this and can be safely disregarded.
"So now for the reality.
It is almost possible to feel sorry for the apostles of a new post-EU world. They have shrunk from glad proclaimers to a kind of tetchy defensiveness about their project: from “it’s going to be even better than we dreamt” (circa 2016) to “it’s nothing like as bad as you say” (circa 2021). Yes, happily, it’s true that on vaccine-purchase we’ve done well outside the EU but we’d have been free to do the same from within it.
Brexiteers will be irritated that this column should even raise the question of whether Brexit is working. “Too early to pronounce,” they will say, uncomfortably aware that early signs are troubling. So their talk instead is of “teething problems”, of “glitches” to be “ironed out”, of merely short-term bureaucratic problems. As the foreign secretary asks British business to look ahead ten years for the fruits of Brexit, a whole decade is slipped quietly into the prospectus. My
Times colleague James Dean pointed out on Thursday that many exporters are preoccupied with survival through 2021, not sunshine in 2031.
When you do bring Brexiteers to focus on the here and now they dismiss the anxious mood as being all bound up with the pandemic. The opposite is true. Lockdown has given Brexit a breathing space to settle down, out of the spotlight. The signs are that it is not settling well. British fishing has been absolutely clobbered. Exporting and importing goods has become a headache. Financial services have been left out in the cold, and only a warm and co-operative future relationship with the EU could bring the City better access, yet ministers seem set on aggravating tensions.
An alarming example of this is the Northern Ireland border issue. The Democratic Unionist Party (with a little help from criminal threats by loyalist ultras) seems set on reneging on the protocol Britain signed. And Downing Street’s response? Suspending border checks until 2023 is a preposterous proposal, which (we must know) Brussels will see as a provocation.
Ursula von der Leyen’s foolish proposal (fast withdrawn) to block EU vaccine exports into Northern Ireland presented us with an opportunity to defuse tension. Instead, the appointment this week of Lord Frost as EU relations minister hits any hopes of nurturing a co-operative relationship with the EU. We need a diplomat, not a nightclub bouncer."
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/brexits-sunlit-uplands-have-soon-vanished-tgkq078mm
