The UK, or the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (to give its full name), also regularly referred to as Britain by many people including Boris Johnson for example, officially regained its Independence when it cancelled its membership of the European Union at 23:00 hrs on 31st January 2020.
There will be a multitude of ramifications associated with the UK leaving the EU, in all sorts of what have been called ‘policy areas’, some of which won’t be finalised for years. The ‘key’ ones are listed as: NHS and Healthcare; Law and Order; Industry and Investment; Regulation; Data; Farming and the Environment; Fisheries; Borders; Travel; Expats and Pensioners; and the one that is likely to have the greatest impact on Solar Solve Ltd, which is Trade.
Although the UK is now legally outside of the EU, in reality nothing much has changed because Britain will spend the remainder of 2020 in a transition period with the bloc. The plan is that for this year at least, Britain will seek to strike trade agreements with major non-EU countries, whilst maintaining zero trade barriers with the EU for the whole of 2020. An extended objective is to strike free trade deals with more than a dozen countries in the next 3 years in an ambitious UK Independence plan to have 80% of trade covered by such agreements.
I would like think that within the UK, now that the way forward has been set in motion, UK citizens of all previous persuasions will realise and accept that, for the benefit of us all, the best way to proceed going forward, is to adopt a ‘we are at war’ attitude and work together to make our country great again. I appreciate it is a well-worn cliché but it does fit the bill regarding where we should all go on to from here.
Most of the news channels and newspaper pundits did not miss the opportunity to make or refer to the statement ‘We are just leaving the EU, we are not leaving Europe’. At Solar Solve we are well aware of this and have referred to it many times in blogs and to our European customers. It is in the best interests of both the EU and the UK to broker deals that benefit both sides and I am sure that will happen most of the time. If I have my facts right, I believe that last Saturday, 1st February, the French president was being very negative about the UK departure and less than complimentary about something we had done that upset him. Then somewhere else, on the same day, I read that the French trade negotiators were lining up to negotiate trade deals with the UK. It seems like political side-swiping and gamesmanship are never going to change.
I mentioned at the beginning of this document there are numerous policy areas, listing 11 of them, for the Prime Minister and the UK government to deal with and lots of people to keep happy. TRADE is just one of them, though it seems to be the most important one when it comes to completing our withdrawal from the EU, so that is hopefully a good thing for Solar Solve.
As Solar Solve Ltd we will be embracing the new trading opportunities that will present themselves for an Independent UK to profit from and tackle them with the utmost enthusiasm, just as we have always done.
For those who have not yet realised, in an effort to speedily overcome past conflicts, we will be following Boris Johnson’s tactic of not using BREXIT, which is now a name from the past but instead, concentrating on using UK INDEPENDENCE, a name for the future.
JHL MBE SSL Co. Chairman
