Sketch: Boris gets Brexit done with a decent deal

In his moment of triumph in the Commons, Boris Johnson played it straight. There was little of the harrumphing, or the silly classical quips, or the poor taste jokes we are used to. Only his hair – flipping up and outwards – refused to behave.

Here was the often jelly-like Boris with a spine: he looked as though he could smell the victory coming his way. It was clear from the word go of his opening speech on Wednesday morning ahead of the debate and historic vote in the Commons on Britain’s departure from the European Union that he was finally onto a winner.

The PM also knew he could ignore the pettifogging of the LibDems and the SNP (the leader of the Nationalists Ian Blackford has officially lost it) as he had the crucial backing of his own MPs, including the ERG hardliners, but more critically, the opposition Labour party.

Indeed, Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, did much of the work for the Prime Minister by sternly telling MPs that a vote against the new trade agreement with the EU was a vote for no deal. You can’t get clearer than that: Starmer has obviously been listening to Labour’s focus groups.

And what a victory it was: after four and a half years, Britain’s MPs voted by a stonking 521 votes to 73 for a new deal outside the EU.

Like the promise made in the famous Ronseal ad, Boris has delivered “exactly what it says on the tin.” In little over a year, the PM has come-up with a new trade deal which is functional, sticky and long-lasting. This year, his Brexit team, led by chief negotiator Lord Frost, have achieved what once seemed impossible: a comprehensive trade agreement which is pretty much having your cake and eating it. (In another era, Lord Frost would now be given an Earldom for his heroic efforts.)

The new Trade and Cooperation Agreement allows access to the single market without tariffs or quotas, managed divergence on the trickier issues such as the level playing field and state aid through a new Joint Partnership Council, and freedom from the EU’s laws and its courts.

It is this new body which will have the power to decide on whether or not either side has “undercut” the other, on issues from workers’ rights to environmental regulations to state-aid. Ironically, those that criticise this part of the deal come from both sides of the Brexit spectrum:  the hardcore Brexiters, the hardcore Remainers and some within the EU itself.

On the Brexit side, there are still doubters who claim that Johnson has conned the nation with this new treaty, particularly through the agreement to set up the JP council which they fear will tie the UK de facto to EU rules.

It’s too early to claim categorically that this is not the intention – on either side – but setting up such an arbitration tribunal is commonplace to all the EU’s bi-lateral trade agreements with third parties. Even in the event of a “no deal”, the UK would still have been party to WTO arbitration.

And on the Remainer side, there are those who feared that once freed from the EU, the UK will dash to rip up the rule-books and race to the bottom. Why do these people always assume the Brits want to be cheapskates ? Indeed, one of the great paradoxes of our relations with the EU is that we gold-plated so many of its regulations.

On the face of it then, their fears are misplaced. If the UK is to push for growth and boost exports in a bigger global market, then industry and commerce will need to not only maintain standards but keep them high if they are to compete internationally.

Johnson gets this and, for once, he spelled it out by dismissing those who fear Britain will go backwards to Dickensian-style squalor. He needs to repeat this time and time again.

Much has been made of the absence of a deal for the City and Britain’s highly successful financial services industry over the much misunderstood concept of “equivalence” – prompting Labour MPs to stand up and defend the bankers’ and their City business. It was my favourite moment of the debate, a moment of pure joy which Boris didn’t miss responding to by pointing out Labour now supports the bankers and Brexit.

Yet not being tied down to any special deal is exactly what much of the City wanted. It is what the Bank of England and even former governor and big Remainer, Mark Carney, have gone out of their way to push the government to achieve: the freedom for the City to set its own rules by international standards and not be a Brussels rule-taker.

Apart from some of the big US investment banks, most financiers and bankers appreciate that being free of onerous EU rules such as Mifid 2 will give the City’s financial industry far more freedom to innovate, as it always has done.

By far the most moving part of Johnson’s speech was the refreshing honesty in which he set the tone for our leaving of the EU, a departure which for many remains an extraordinarily emotional and disturbing wrench. It needs to be healed. His words should be reread by all those who regret the decision, but maybe kept even closer by those who may slip into indulging in smug-satisfaction.

Johnson said: “Those of us who campaigned for Britain to leave the EU never sought a rupture with our closest neighbours. We would never wish to rupture ourselves from fellow democracies beneath whose soil lie British war graves in tranquil cemeteries, often tended by local schoolchildren, testament to our shared struggle for freedom and everything we cherish in common. What we sought was not a rupture but a resolution, a resolution of the old and vexed question of Britain’s political relations with Europe, which bedevilled our post-War history.”

Now that these tangled relations have been resolved, he said, the UK and EU must now forge a fantastic future relationship: “Britain can be its closest friend, a free-trading power, and a liberal, outward-looking force for good’.” Indeed, rather than losing out on business, leaving the single market and customs union should mean “even more” business being done and based on free trade and friendly cooperation.

He was also generous about his new-found EU friends, Ursula Von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, and Michel Barnier, the EU’s persistent negotiator. A high profile post-Covid dinner – minus masks and without fish on the menu – somewhere fancy in London would be a great way to demonstrate this new spirit of friendship.

These were important remarks, pointing to a stronger, healthier and no doubt robust relationship with our continental partners. After all,  we have been Brexiting one way and another on and off for almost 2,000 years.

No doubt there will be more splits and disputes with our closest neighbours. But fundamentally we Europeans have more interests that unite us than divide us. Ironically, our relations may even improve now that we are out of the EU and cannot blame Brussels.

For now, Johnson should be allowed his time in the sun. He has done what he set out to do and given the voters what they asked for. Now the hard work begins: Boris has to follow up on other promises, on levelling up across the regions and investing for the future.

For inspiration, he should reread the words of his Athenian hero, the great Pericles, who is reported by Thucydides as saying: “Our polity does not copy the laws of neighboring states; we are rather a pattern to others than imitators ourselves. It is called a democracy, because not the few but the many govern.”