Brexit will finally happen. After almost a year of arguments and debates on the issue of Britain exiting the European Union, Prime Minister Theresa May finally signed a letter to the EU invoking Article 50, which will now see negotiations between the UK and EU commence. It will take another two years however, for the exit to actually happen.
This comes as a bitter pill to swallow for many Britons, many of whom hoped that May would not honour the results of the July 2016 poll. After the courts ruled that only Parliament would have the power to invoke Article 30, the house voted to leave, the Queen give this decision her assent and the rest will be history. There is no going back now. If May had done that, she would have sowed the seeds to political revolution in the country, as sentiments over certain aspects of membership with the EU, like mass immigration and a perceived loss of sovereignty will always have remained.
What is going to be the toughest task for the UK right now, is to go through over four decades of deals, contracts and laws, and work to smoothen things out with the EU. There are over one million UK citizens living elsewhere in the EU and over three million EU residents living in the UK. They cannot be inconvenienced. The EU is yet to respond, and will do so in a week perhaps, on the guidelines for negotiations with the 27 member states of the union. This is definitely not going to be as easy and those who voted to leave may have not really thought this through. The final deal will only be agreed upon once 72 percent of member states agree on the terms of the deal, which will then be ratified across the union. This also means that May will have to carve out a special Brexit team, which will start going over all deals and laws.
There is also the matter of business laws that may affect British firms with holdings and operations across the EU and, in turn, EU companies with similar positions in Britain. For this the UK will have to vote to adopt EU laws, which were in force all this time, and then proceed to amend or disregard certain laws or bylaws that would be contentious.
But that’s not all. While England and Wales voted to leave the EU, Scotland and Northern Ireland did not. Scotland now wants to secede from the UK, but the UK government has refused to negotiate. This is a political scenario that can weaken the UK’s standing during Brexit negotiations if an ‘independent Scotland’ campaign begins. All said and done, Brexit was never going to be easy. But how tedious it is really going to be is yet unknown.
