 Boris Johnson says that if you give him in the Tourism Majority after Thursday's General Election he'll be able to put three years of political strife to bed and get Brexit done. But is that actually true? Let's go back to the beginning. How this all started. 23rd of June 2016 we have the referendum to leave the European Union. As we all know leave one, 52% of the vote. David Cameron, who until that point was the Prime Minister, took that defeat as effectively a vote of no confidence in him as Prime Minister, although not his government. So we don't have a general election, instead we have a Tory leadership election. It's not actually a race in the end, it's a coronation. His previous Home Secretary, Theresa May, not long after, replaces him as Prime Minister. She's in the role for seven, eight months. And on the 29th of March 2017 Theresa May, Prime Minister, triggers Article 50. You've probably heard those words before. What is Article 50? Article 50 is the means by which a European Union member state, which is what Britain still is to this day, is how you leave the EU. And it's effectively the starting gun on the Brexit process. It means, however, we have to conclude the process in two years. So Article 50 talks about a bunch of things, one of which being you have to complete within two years, you have to withdraw within two years. Like I say, that's the end of March. Very quickly in April Theresa May calls a general election. Why? Well, there's this man here, Jeremy Corbyn. He's not doing so well in the polls. She's only got a majority, it's quite a slender majority. She inherits from David Cameron, you know, 15 to 20, depends what day of the week it is. And she doesn't think that's enough to get a deal through comfortably. So she goes back to the polls and she thinks she's going to get a big, big majority to get Brexit through in time within the premise of Article 50. However, we have a big surprise in 2017. Jeremy Corbyn, his Labour Party get 40% of the popular vote. It's a hung parliament. And this creates big problems because we need to get Brexit done. But now, unlike previously, we don't even have a majority government. However, as I've already said, Article 50 has been triggered. We have to depart within two years of March 29th, 2017. We haven't got long. This is now June 2017. So we've got about 22 months to leave the EU. However, Theresa May can't go back to the people. She can't have another general election because the Tories know they'll lose. But they also haven't got a majority to get anything through. No majority equals no Brexit. However, she has to do something. The clock is ticking. Article 50 has been triggered. So we have that first meaningful vote. January 2019, earlier this year, the Tories put Theresa May's withdrawal deal to the House of Commons and it loses. It's the biggest parliamentary defeat for any government in British political history. She loses by 230 votes. She makes some changes. Again, she hasn't really got much of a choice. Goes back to the Commons, loses by 140. Not as bad as previously, but still a colossal defeat for a government. She goes back a third time. This time, we've had an extension to Article 50 because it's clear we're not going to get out in time. We're not going to get a deal pass Parliament in time. The deadline is no longer 29th of March 2019. It's now been pushed back to October. In any case, at the end of March, we have the third meaningful vote. She loses. Again, not by as large a scale as before. We've gone from 230 to 58 and that's with a few cosmetic changes, but it's not enough. And remember, Theresa May has said her premiership would be judged by her ability to get Brexit done. She inherits the majority. She lost it. She couldn't get through Brexit. She's had to extend Article 50. Theresa May resigns. Calamity made. She couldn't really get anything she claimed she could get through. She fails in every single respect. After a short leadership election in the Conservative Party, Boris Johnson, this man, replaces her as Prime Minister. He becomes leader of the Conservative Party and Prime Minister on July 24th, 2019. Now, there's lots of brinksmanship. There's lots of talk of no deal because that deadline is looming large October 31st. We have prorogation of Parliament. We have all sorts of constitutional shenanigans that some people think it's brinksmanship to scare people into voting for a deal. Others think he's very serious about a no deal Brexit. In any case, he surprises many, many people by bringing a deal back to Parliament after October 17th. That leaves him two weeks to get a deal through. We finally have a deal between these two countries which could get through. Theresa May still never looked like getting through. This could. Why? What's changed? Well, fundamentally, the relationship of Northern Ireland to both the EU and Britain is different under Boris Johnson's deal. Within Theresa May's deal, we had the issue of the backstop. Again, you've probably heard of those words a lot. What does it mean? Well, I'll try and be brief. Basically, within the backstop, Northern Ireland, its relationship, its economic relationship stayed quite close to the UK, but it also meant that Britain, Great Britain, Northern Ireland couldn't negotiate their own external trade deals with other countries. Now, for people like Jacob Rees-Smogg, the Brexiters, that was a big part of Brexit in the first place. And what Johnson's deal does, it says basically Northern Ireland's future is closer to the EU than to Britain, but Britain can negotiate its own trade deals now. So that wins over people like Jacob Rees-Smogg, the European research group, the ERG, the Tory Right. They really love that. But there's a big downside for Boris Johnson, because the DUP, the people who've basically been giving the Tories a working majority in Parliament are in foster their leader. They don't like it. Why? Because the reason they're in politics is to keep a strong relationship between Northern Ireland and the UK. They do not like Boris Johnson's deal. And that's a big issue, because, as I've said, they're giving the Tories a majority. So Johnson has a deal. It has popularity within the Tory base, among activists, and also amongst his own MPs. But he can't get it through that Parliament. So he goes back to the people. We have another extension for Article 50. It's now the end of January 20 next year, just over a month from now. And he calls a fresh set of general elections. And of course, they're going to be on December the 12th. The big advantage he now has after negotiating a deal with Brussels is he has something to actually concretely put in the manifesto and say, you give us a majority, we can get Brexit done. We can put all of this behind us. It's in the manifesto, maybe not a thousand times, but certainly getting close. And the big theme of the Tories for this general election is Brexit. Anything else is kind of a secondary issue. And even whether you agree or disagree, that's their shtick. Get Brexit done. Give us a majority. We can put three years of turmoil behind us. But things are a bit more complicated than that because Article 50 and the withdrawal agreement is actually the first step of a much longer journey. And the question is, is that actually Brexit? So if you do vote Tory next Thursday, and the Tories then get a majority, what will happen is they'll probably get Johnson's deal through Parliament by the end of December. And then we leave the European Union formally by the deadline, that extended new deadline for Article 50 by the end of January. So we've done something clearly significant. We've left the European Union. Is that getting Brexit done? Well, not quite. Why? Because we've now entered a new phase called the transitional arrangement. Transitional arrangement is meant to go from January 2020 to December 2020. And basically, even though we've left EU, we're still subject to EU regulations and so on. We have none of the freedoms which Brexiteers would like to claim we have. We don't have power over our borders, laws, etc. in this transitional arrangement. They would say that's fine, because this is only temporary. It's only for 11 months. However, there's good reason to be very skeptical about Steve Barclay, the Tory Brexit Minister, you know, the member of cabinet responsible for this stuff as recently as October, said that he thought the deadline could go to 2022 or further. Recently, in the unredacted documents that were leaked and were published by Labour, we actually know that in ongoing trade negotiations between the Americans and between the Brits, between our civil servants and theirs, the Americans are actually very keen for the process to go beyond 2020. Why? Well, Donald Trump is up for re-election. Of course, we have the presidential election next year, and he wants to be able to go back to the people for a second term in the United States, saying, look what I'm doing. It's not yet done. I can't complete this trade deal until you vote for me having a second term as US President. So it suits the Americans for this transition arrangement to actually last far longer than 2020, even if you think it's possible to negotiate a trade agreement that will be done quickly, which in reality, many don't. Many don't. We'll go back to that in a second about how long it takes to conclude trade negotiations of this magnitude. But the big problem for Britain now, we're in the transition arrangement, we're in January, February 2020, the big problem is we're dealing with two superpowers, the two biggest markets in the world, the United States and the European Union. And they are fundamentally different things. And this is why I think the transition arrangement lasts far longer than 10 months. It's far more likely to last 10 years than 10 months, because the Europeans want something from us, the Americans want something completely different. We're trying to arrive two horses at once. Not even difficult, probably impossible. Here's a quote from the unredacted documents which were published last week. USTR, United States Trade Representative, the UK-EU situation would be determinative. Now, this is a UK civil servant saying that the negotiations between the Brits and the Europeans determine what happens with the Americans. This bit is key. For the Americans, there would be all to play for an in no deal situation. But UK commitments the customs union and the single market would make a UK-US free trade agreement a non-starter. That is to say, if we conclude a deal with the Europeans, which includes the customs arrangement, single market, we have to have some kind of customs arrangement, as I've already said, because of the issue of Northern Ireland. If we do that, the Americans aren't interested in the free trade deal. What's best for the Americans in the words of our own civil servants is no deal. So the Americans ideally want no deal. The Europeans don't want no deal. So we have a very complicated situation here. And the transitional arrangement has a number of political and economic dynamics at work. Let's take a step back. How long do these things normally take? How long will it take to conclude a trade deal with the U.S. and also a long-term settlement with the EU? The last trade deal the U.S. concluded most recently, successfully, was between the United States and South Korea. And that took between 2006 and 2012. So it took six years to conclude a pretty significant trade deal. So that would be a good ballpark figure for us if we're looking at how long it's going to take to negotiate a trade agreement between Britain and the United States. As well as that, the TTIP ultimately wasn't successful. It was binned, really. That was between 2013-2019. So we have a decent sample here. We know how long it takes. It takes around six years to conclude a comprehensive trade agreement. Now, some people say, well, we can do it more quickly than that. You don't want to do it more quickly than that because we want to do this properly. It's like saying we want to create the foundations for a house in 24 hours. If you do that, the house is going to fall down. We don't want to have, for instance, conditions in there which would undermine the NHS. We don't want conditions in there which would compromise or undermine animal welfare standards, food safety standards, for instance. Now, people might say, well, that's not going to happen. If you rush something of this magnitude, it is going to happen. That's why all the trade agreements that we can make around the world, particularly those included in the US, take this long. That's for a reason. They're not doing it for fun. At the same time, at the same time as trying to ride two horses, at the same time as knowing that these things take a lot longer than 10 months, like I say, we're in this transition arrangement. It's going to take a significant amount of time before we have a longer-term partnership with both the EU and the US. There's the political context. It's not like everything else just stands still and we negotiate these different things. The United Kingdom is composed of a bunch of nations, England, Wales, Northern Ireland and, of course, Scotland. The major problem for us concluding a deal with the Europeans and with the Americans is Northern Ireland. And what we already see within Boris Johnson's deal is, effectively, the tacit admission that the future of Northern Ireland is with the Republic. There's a reason why the DUP couldn't support it. Basically, they're saying, for things like electricity, Northern Ireland and the Republic can share, you know, they can be effectively in some kind of union. Northern Ireland will enjoy similar sort of status quotes, what it presently does with the rest of the EU. What happens going forward, very difficult to predict, it would be very volatile. You could have unification. You wouldn't even need to go that far. It could stay, Northern Ireland could stay in the UK, but ultimately it has an economic relationship with Ireland, which is far more integrated. Legally, it may remain a part of the UK, but in reality, actually, it's far closer to the Republic. Long term, what does that mean? I think unification is very, very plausible. All depends on how badly negotiations go for the rest of the UK with both the EU and the US. On top of that, you've got Scotland. Scotland, of course, has an independence referendum in 2014. They lost by 45 to 55. Why? Because a vote for independence was seen as a risk. It was seen as a risk of things like pensions, the absence of their own currency, et cetera. But now Britain's not just left the EU, but we're in some strange space, a limbo, where we're negotiating different things, the US, the EU, the NHS is under threat, and the Scots in 2021, because Nicola Sturgeon's SMP get another majority at Holyrood, the Scottish Parliament, they either get a majority or they get a working majority with the Scottish Greens, determine it's time for another independence referendum. They get that in the early 2020s, either 2021, 2022. Scotland has voted for parties who aren't in the Tories since the 60s. Scotland feels we keep on voting Labour or SMP, and yet we keep on getting Tory Westminster governments. We've had enough in that second referendum, they choose, in their eyes, stability rather than chaos. So the part of the UK is they can rejoin the EU. Scotland rejoins the EU as an independent nation. What's more, it adopts the euro. Now this is really important, why? Because not only has Britain lost one of the home nations, it's now declared independence, but also it's integrated in a massive market, hundreds of millions of people, and a currency which is increasingly strong against £1 sterling. Businesses in places like Newcastle, Carlisle, they move to Scotland, they move to Glasgow to Edinburgh. These are far more stable places to run a business. Young people in the same areas, Cumbria, Northumbria, et cetera, Northumberland, they move to Scotland too. They see far greater prospects for them in a successful independent Scotland than in England, which is really in a bit of an economic pickle as it continues in long term, but very slow and gruelling trade negotiations with both the EU and the US. So things on this timeline are looking pretty bleak. 2008 crisis, you don't need to go into it, we know how bad it's been for the British economy. Since then, you've had flat lining pay in Britain between 2009 and 2019, productivity, wages, economic growth has been broadly flat 11 years. But in this timeline, because of the problems we're seeing with the transitional arrangement, that continues. That is the new normal. Now, have any countries had to engage with those kinds of economic problems, that level of inertia before? Yes. One is Italy. Another is Japan. People talked about Italy's lost decade after the early 1990s. It then suffered another one, it's present in its third lost decade. Something very similar to Japan. Basically, low to no growth society. So it's perfectly plausible that that is an image of Britain's future. However, on top of the issues of economic inertia, we've also got political instability. We're seeing the Union pull in different directions, Scottish independence, Northern Ireland throwing its lot with the EU and the Republic and Wales. Wales sees Scotland making a success of independence by the mid-2020s. They see the Northern Irish making a success of closer integration with the Republic. They say we want a part of that too, because this isn't looking good. If this is the future of England and Wales, we don't really see a future here at all. So Wales gets a referendum, let's say mid to late 2020s. It's going to be very close. No two ways about it. Whether they get independence, I don't know. They'll certainly get more devolution. And increasingly, people in Wales will see the future for them as closer to the Republic, as closer to Belfast and Dublin as to London and to England. So things are looking really tough. The political context is difficult. The constitutional settlement of Britain is breaking down and the economy is completely stagnant. But Brexit is almost done. One of the reasons being Scotland's left. Scotland's 65% of Scots wanted to remain. They're now no longer a variable. Northern Ireland had big misgivings about leaving the customs union, but of course they still want to remain with the rest of the UK. Again, not as big an issue. So Brexit is now done because the political problems are kind of going away a bit. What's more, we're now signing a trade deal with the U.S. So those two horses I was talking about can now both be ridden because Scotland and Northern Ireland, not such massive variables anymore. We sign a free trade agreement with the U.S. Let's put it to optimist. Let's say the mid to late 2020s. We sign that free trade agreement. What do we offer them in a free trade agreement? Not very much. Britain doesn't really export very much. People will say financial services, legal services. The U.S. is world class of that already. What we can offer is the NHS. It's the biggest employer in the country. It's a huge healthcare market for U.S. pharmaceuticals and healthcare providers. That's what they want and it's a huge, huge thing for them. They get that. Let's say mid 2020s to 2030. Around the same time, we conclude something with the European Union. So we have a long-term thing going on there. Brexit is almost done. What does it mean? Scotland, its economy is doing well. Population is rising. Lots of labour and capital flight from England because of course of the economic volatility around not having concluded negotiations for so long. It's doing incredibly well. Northern Ireland is benefiting from closer integration with the Republic. Let's also say that Wales has left the United Kingdom now by 2030. Britain, or at this point England, at this point has a population which has fallen from around 68 million in 2019 to around 58, 59 million. It's had economic stagnation as I've already said on the previous page. Wage stagnation, productivity stagnation and because it's got a shrinking tax base, it's seen its population fall by 10 million. That's quite significant. It can no longer engage in big prestige, global prestige projects. So things like aircraft carriers, no longer possible. The British Army is at its lowest level really in 100 years. Trident, no longer possible right now. The nuclear submarine port is in Scotland anyway. The money isn't really there though with that small population to pay for these things. Similarly the BBC has major problems because it's had to share assets with the newly independent Scotland and Wales. Obviously Northern Ireland is a bit more complex and there's fewer people to pay for it. So the big institutions we associate with British hard and soft power, the military, nuclear weapons, the BBC, a few other things too, all under threat. Meanwhile the NHS subject to American predatory multinationals. So in this situation, we're getting Brexit done. What does it look like? The United Kingdom has gone from this at the end of the 2010s to just this. Scotland's gone. Northern Ireland's gone or going. Wales has gone. Donald Trump might be president of the White House anymore but he's won a second term because of concluding a very successful trade agreement with the UK. Britain is poorer and smaller than it's been for a very long time. In terms of its vulnerability on the global stage, it's probably at its weakest since 1066. It's a small, poor country which has lost more political and diplomatic weight than any precedent really can offer in history. Arguably Venice as a major power falls this far this quickly. On the global stage it's the weakest it's been since the 1500s. It is no longer even a second order player. The top ranking players right now in global affairs, China, the United States, the second rank is Britain, France, Germany, Russia. Brexit means that we go from second to third rank. But we've got Brexit done. You know, we've lost Scotland, the home nations have declared independence. Scotland, Northern Ireland, we're poorer, smaller than we've been in hundreds of years. We're incredibly vulnerable to foreign exploitation. But 2030, I'm calling it. We've got Brexit done. If you've enjoyed this video, I think you've learned something from it, it's added value, perhaps you weren't sure about some concepts and they're a bit clearer now. Here's something you can do. You can go to support.nivaramea.com that's our logo. We're trying to offer people insight in areas where the media often neglects to inform people properly. If you want to follow us on Facebook, you can. Navarra Media, also on Twitter at Navarra Media, also on Instagram. 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