The battle for Brexit is lost. Now the real fight begins

Brexit is going to happen.

The UK will leave the EU on 31st January 2020, when the articles of the EU will no longer apply to the UK under international law. But for the next 11 months, the UK will follow them, and for all intents and purposes, the UK will remain a member.

The WA and WAB ensures that agreement is in place to allow the transition period to begin.

Under the WA, the UK has to request an extension before July 2020.

That is the legal position, of course, reality and needs might change that, but, that is for the future.

It is important, therefore, to realise that the WA and WAB is not Brexit, just the prelude, the overture. The main part of it is yet to come.

The UK needs to agree up to 67 different policy areas with the EU, whereas the WA had just three. The WA dragged on for two and a half years, the future arrangements must be done in 11 months. Sooner than that as it needs to be ratified, that is very far from a given.

For there to be an agreement on what the relationship will be, the UK has to decide internally, politically what it wants at the end, and that is a long way from happening. We have already seen what happens when one side enters talks not knowing what it wants at the end of it.

And the EU has been planning this phase for months. While UK politics plays out in endless debates, votes, appeals and judgments, the EU just prepared for the next phase.

Ports are ready, or in a better state of readiness than UK ones for sure. We passed through Calais two weeks ago and new roads and freight handling areas have been built at the port. The UK has put some cones down on a motorway.

If the debate thus far has been marred by lies and disinformation, it is important that the realities of what happens next is not so bebased. But Johnson and the Brexiteers know nothing else, least of all about international trade.

The public think Brexit will be over on 31st January; it won't be. It will drag on for years if it ever ends at all, but 2020 will be full of nothing else, as the political class wrestle with their dogmatic desires with the reality of what industry wants. Carrying this on while jobs vanish and people get poorer will be a tough ask. There are already effects of Brexit; factories and industries closing, but that is all in the future. Cloisures and mass unemployment are just around the corner, what of Brexit and the people's will then?

What happens next year will affect the country for a generation or more, we may be weary of fighting, but it is just as important now we carry on, holding the sword of truth before us.