LONDON – Just before 3pm on Wednesday, British lawmakers voted to ratify the Brexit trade agreement with the European Union, marking a symbolic end to a debate that has isolated the country for more than four years.
Minutes later, Health Secretary Matt Hancock stood up in Parliament to announce that the government would place three – quarters of England’s population on the strictest level of lockdown, as a new variant of the coronavirus rampage across the country. . The government also delayed the reopening of secondary schools in January.
It was a dizzying day of contrasts in Britain on Wednesday – a country that is propelling itself to a future after Brexit, although it has remained in the grip of a pandemic that has recently entered a frightening new phase , with a newly authorized UK manufacturer. vaccine while rushing to vaccinate his people against the virus.
The vote of 521 to 73 took place after a hectic single day of debate, just a day before the agreement came into force. The House of Commons approved the agreement and sent it to the House of Lords, which ratified it later in the day, as attention shifted back to the increasingly desperate attempts to curb the virus. Even about the pandemic, however, the news was mixed up.
Earlier Wednesday, British regulators approved a second vaccine, developed in laboratories at the University of Oxford and manufactured by AstraZeneca, which officials say gives hope for an end to the plague of infections. Mr. Hancock considered it a popular example of British scientific achievement, but warned that it would not save the country a few more difficult weeks before the doses became widely available.
“Today is a day of mixed emotions,” he said. Hancock said and underestimated the events that unfold every hour.
For Prime Minister Boris Johnson, the penultimate day of 2020 summed up a year of incessant turmoil. It began in January with Britain’s formal departure from the European Union – a moment of triumph for a leader who won a landslide victory in the election by promising to ‘finish Brexit’ – but quickly in ‘ a crisis slipped, while Johnson repeatedly turned in the with the coronavirus after being admitted to the hospital, himself.
The decision to postpone the reopening of most secondary schools and colleges in England by two weeks until January 18 was another reversal, as the government promised to keep schools open, regardless of what it still closed. Education Secretary Gavin Williamson said most primary schools will open on January 4 according to schedule.
Public health experts have generally supported the government’s action, although some have said schools should be closed altogether or delayed for two weeks around the orbit of infections, which have been on the rise since last month of a faster transmissible variant of the virus, has increased, to reconsider.
“The numbers are now too high,” said Devi Sridhar, head of the global public health program at the University of Edinburgh.
Britain reported 50,023 new cases and 981 deaths on Wednesday, the highest number of deaths since April. In all, the country recorded 72,548 deaths due to the virus, the highest number in Europe.
The government estimated that 60 percent of the new cases came from the variant that spread to other countries in Europe and was detected in Colorado this week. The sudden increase in affairs heightened the government’s plan to keep schools open when it began a massive vaccination.
The new rules will begin to expand strongly, starting on Thursday, the areas of England below the highest level of restrictions, Tier 4, which includes non-essential businesses, banning connections between households and telling people to stay home normally. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, which set their own rules, have similar limits.
At a news conference at the end of the day, Mr. Johnson balanced his enthusiasm for the new vaccine, which he seized as a sign of an enterprising Britain after Brexit, with a sober acknowledgment that the country had remained in a deep crisis. He did not want to rule out further changes in schools, which until now have been one of the only areas where the government has been holding on for several months.
“My emotions, I think, are a mixture of frustration, plus optimism, equals grim determination,” Johnson said.
It was a stark contrast to the confident Prime Minister who opened the debate on the trade agreement this morning by expressing it as a way to ‘take back control of our money, our borders, our laws and our waters’.
“We are now seizing this moment,” he said, “to establish a fantastic new relationship with our European neighbors through free trade and friendly cooperation.”
Despite the lack of time for inquiry, the ease with which the agreement was passed by parliament was a departure from the numerous knife votes that took place before last year’s election, when the Volksraad was elected on Brexit.
Conservative lawmakers, including a caucus of hardline Brexit supporters, have backed Mr. Johnson gathered. His success in defusing his party’s Brexit edge was remarkable, as the rifts over the European Union had been hurting the party for decades and Britain had made significant concessions to Brussels in the talks.
William Cash, a Conservative lawmaker who has opposed his career against European integration, described the agreement as a ‘true turning point in our history’. Johnson ‘saved our democracy’.
Even the opposition Labor Party has ordered its lawmakers to support the agreement on the grounds that it was better than nothing, although more than thirty are refusing to vote for an agreement that creates new trade barriers for European countries.
Critics point out that Johnson’s deal does not guarantee much for the UK services sector and that it means extra bureaucracy for UK businesses exporting to continental Europe, which will have to make millions of additional customs declarations.
The former prime minister, Theresa May, noted that for months, lawmakers had rejected every previous attempt to market a trade agreement with the European Union. On Wednesday, legislators approved an agreement within a few hours, which according to Mrs. May was not as good as the proposals made by her government last year.
Nevertheless, Mr. Johnson increased his political goal through the country’s ability to exercise sovereignty and make decisions without being restricted by European Union institutions such as its Court of Justice.
Some pointed to the rapid approval of the AstraZeneca vaccine, as well as the Pfizer vaccine a few weeks ago, as proof of the new freedom, although Britain granted the approval while still abiding by EU rules. These rules allow all member states to approve vaccines during a pandemic before the bloc’s health regulator, but only Britain has done so.
Analysts said Britain would feel more pressure not to face the European Union if it were still a member.
The trade agreement has no shortage of critics. Fishing workers have Mr. Johnson is accused of capitulating to fishing rights at the European Union. Business leaders are concerned about the bureaucratic burdens of the deal, and that it does little for the services sector, which accounts for about four-fifths of the UK economy.
Mr. Johnson, however, rejected proposals that the new arrangements would cause British businesses headaches.
“From the point of view of British exporters, for example, they now have the advantage of having only one set of forms that they have to fill out for export to the whole world,” he said in an interview with the BBC, and the fact that millions of new customs forms that were not needed while Britain was part of the European trade bloc had to be filled out.
Opponents of Brexit, Johnson said, have repeatedly warned that Britain cannot deviate from European Union rules and still trade freely with the bloc – in other words, they cannot have its cake and eat it either.
“This does not appear to be true,” the prime minister said. “I want you to see that this is a Kakist treaty.”