Here you go:
There is an extended Wikipedia article on the Northern Ireland Protocol, but it doesn’t get into the latest political twists and turns. The Northern Ireland Assembly has published a detailed timeline of developments, but it stops at the most recent stalemate. AIUI, it turns on exactly what sort of checks and inspections on goods are needed, but also what might save the faces of the DUP and get them back into the cross-party government (though since that will mean accepting a Sinn Fein First Minister, their foot-dragging is no surprise).
I’m not sure if there are any Brexit issues other than the Northern Ireland Protocol still outstanding (apart from whether Rees-Mogg will ever identify any new opportunities deriving from Brexit) - was there something about access to scientific collaboration programmes?
Brexit was always going to be a two-phase process, in terms of implementation.
First, the Withdrawal Agreement, which addressed moneys owed, rights of citizens, dispute resolution and Northern Ireland. It allowed for a transition period and set out rules for customs and trade during that transition. It came into force on 31 Jan 2020.
The main issue here is the Northern Ireland Protocol. Essentially it created a trade border between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK. This turns out to be a bit of an issue in terms of both prosperity and food supply, which some terribly hurtful people have suggested was a fairly obvious outcome. Not deterred by these clever-clever johnny-come-latelys, the UK government came up with a brilliant wheeze - they simply wouldn’t enforce the protocol. This was an entirely unilateral decision, despite the fact that the Agreement included a dispute resolution mechanism precisely to thrash out these sorts of issues.
As @PatrickLondon says, part of the difficulty here is that this is not just a EU/UK dispute but also a live issue within the extraordinarily fraught sphere of NI politics.
The second part of the process is the final trade deal between the EU and UK. The EU-UK Trade and Co-operation Agreement came into force in May 2021. Under it there is: free trade in goods; a customs border between EU and UK; market access for services. There is not: free movement of people; sharing of real time security data; defense and foreign policy co-operation.
Again, actually implementing customs checks on food has proved tricky for the UK, so we have simply not done it.. Ostensibly because of COVID, whcih didn’t help but customs and haulage experts were saying for years that the UK didn’t have the capacity to do these checks, so it’s not the whole story.
There has definitely been an impact: the costs to business of compliance with customs has been a significant problem with many small and medium sized firms complaining that it risks putting them out of business; long delays and queues at ferry ports are now commonplace; there are reports of maggot-ridden meat being smuggled in to the UK.
It is not however a live political issue. Partly because people are fed up, partly because it has not got technical, partly because our clownshow government isn’t able to actually govern or focus on a problem from one Chancellor to the next.
There are no problems with travel: Ireland and the UK are part of the Common Travel Area:
Note:
British immigration system from 2021
On 11 November 2020, the Immigration Act 1971 was amended by adding “An Irish citizen does not require leave to enter or remain in the United Kingdom”. The Act repeals free movement rights for other EU citizens from 1 January 2021, but makes exceptions for Irish citizens.[50][51] Guidance from the government also states: “Irish citizens will continue to be able to enter and live in the UK as they do now”.[52][53]
That was always going to be the case: at independence in 1922 the Free State remained part of the Commonwealth, so its citizens were automatically allowed entry to the UK. When Ireland declared itself a republic and left the Commonwealth in 1949, the right of free entry and residence could hardly have been withdrawn, given the number of Irish people living in the UK , who would otherwise have found themselves foreigners overnight, irrespective of their personal sense of allegiance. Likewise there were Anglo-Irish in the south who still thought of themselves as “West British”. It was just easier not to put up barriers - a lesson the Brexit fanatics never learnt
Ohoho
Farage is, of course, looking for a new drum to bang to get himself back into electoral politics, but that soundbite will haunt him - I hope.
Of course if he and his lot had been in charge at the time, Brexit would have produced all sorts of wonderful benefits. 'Twas May & Johnson that fouled it up.
Not sure if there is a better thread to ask this, but…
How is life post-Brexit? (especially interested in folks who are experiencing this first-hand).
Is there any significant difference pre and post?
With economic effects, it’s hard to find direct causal relationships between any one cause and any one phenomenon, but sluggish growth, limited (to put it mildly) replacements for lost EU business, and politically a legacy of exasperation with our government among EU governments, all tell their own story.
I think I read somewhere that there are quite a lot of technical issues about border trade controls still awaiting final resolution, but I don’t know the ins and outs of it.
Plus, the situation in Northern Ireland isn’t exactly helped, notwithstanding the most recent agreement - continued pressure from the Tory headbangers about the European Convention on Human Rights threatens to undermine the Good Friday Agreement (and who knows, might not exactly be encouraging the DUP to be more flexible in getting the devolved government working again).
Yeah - there are a couple of rather major confounding factors, to wit Covid and a massive cost of living crisis, that make it difficult to do a clean analysis but it is certainly hard to see any clear benefits in economic terms.
One interesting recent development - it seemed that the fundamental map of British politics had been permanently rewritten, with the Leaver/Remainer divide a new and ugly feature cutting across everything else. But with David Cameron recently appointed to high office in Sunak’s government, it seems maybe not so much.
I think @PatrickLondon is right to say that some elements are still not applied - constantly being announced and then delayed. The big one is SPS checks on food.
Britain delays post-Brexit border checks on EU goods till 2024 | Reuters
It’s expected to add to costs and thus food inflation, so no surprise no-one’s rushing to enforce it.
Thanks, @Stanislaus and @PatrickLondon.
Pre-Brexit, we used to watch a lot of “house hunter” shows that made a big deal about how easy it was to buy property, live and work, and travel between the UK and the EU. When Brexit was announced I thought “well, that’s the end of that.”
Is that true, or did it not have much of an effect?
Oh yeah - automatic right to live and work in the EU as a UK citizen is up in smoke. If you wanted to do it now you’d need a job offer to get a work visa. A lot of sand in the gears.
This is the imponderable. Many of the Tories elected in previously safe Labour seats want the govt to double down on the immigration/Rwanda/ECHR issue, and the opinion polls suggest that appointing Cameron appeals to very few and generally trying to tack back towards the centre just makes Sunak look desperate, to a range of shades of opinion, while the by-election results this year seem to show Leavers going back to Labour. Or maybe it’s mostly Remainers turning out to vote and Leavers staying home.
The poll trends don’t show much sign of any bounce back for the Tories, and all the Braverman hooha hasn’t lessened the image of chaotic infighting between the ineffectual and the insane.