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Brexit: Mission Accomplished or Just the Beginning?

Jamie Dettmer

   British Prime Minister Boris Johnson's recent resounding general
   election victory -- the biggest Conservative win since his predecessor,
   Margaret Thatcher's 1987 barnstorming success -- has made it certain
   that Britain will part company with the European Union come the end of
   January, fulfilling the government's key re-election campaign pledge to
   "get Brexit done."

   Even ardent Remainers, who hoped to engineer a second Brexit referendum
   to overturn the 2016 plebiscite in which a small majority voted to
   leave the European Union, have accepted their hope will not become a
   reality. With a majority of 80 in the House of Commons, Johnson's
   withdrawal legislation, which was presented Thursday in parliament,
   will sail through.

   So will next year be largely a Brexit-free one? Is the saga of
   Britain's departure from Europe to be finally completed more than
   three-and-a-half years after the country voted to leave? Think again,
   say analysts. Britain and Europe will shortly enter a second and
   possibly trickier stage of negotiations over their future political and
   trade relations, and the stakes are high for both sides.

   Speaking after his huge Dec. 12 general election win, Johnson said the
   results of Britain's third such vote in four years had emphasized the
   "irrefutable" determination of the British people to leave the EU and
   to end the "miserable threats" of a second Brexit referendum, a re-run
   plebiscite backed by both Britain's main opposition party, Labour, and
   the centrist Liberal Democrats.

   But whether the Johnson government will be able to forge a trade deal
   with Brussels by the end of 2020, the deadline set under the terms of
   the withdrawal agreement struck by London and Brussels in November, is
   another matter.

   Until the deadline, Britain will be in transition with access to the
   EU's single market and customs union and it will be obliged to observe
   EU laws and regulations as well as product standards.

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