See:
https://chrisgreybrexitblog.blogspot.co ... -mean.html
Whilst the outcome of the election remains unpredictable, there is a clear dividing line between the scenario in which there is a Tory majority and all other scenarios. If there is a Tory majority then, in the words of their endlessly repeated slogan, Britain will “get Brexit done”. More expansively, this week Boris Johnson invited us to “imagine the relief the whole nation will feel if we get Brexit done. Uncertainty ended, investment unlocked, a nation moving forward once again”.
It’s worth taking up that invitation by, indeed, imagining how the nation might feel if Brexit gets done. As a prelude to doing so, it should be clarified that by ‘getting Brexit done’ Johnson means passing the Withdrawal Agreement through parliament, perhaps as early as Christmas, and leaving the EU on 31 January 2020. Britain would then enter a transition period lasting, in the absence of its being extended, until the end of 2020.
This would mark a very important moment, which remain-inclined voters should take full note of. It will be the point at which reversing Brexit becomes impossible. That perhaps goes without saying, but I mention it because I have seen it suggested, usually by remainers, that revocation would still be an option during the transition period. Unequivocally, it won’t. Thus those for whom remaining in the EU is their main priority it’s important to understand that this will not happen if the Tories win a majority in the election, and that this is literally the only and last chance they have to prevent Brexit which they can only do by voting in a way that prevents a Tory victory.
For leave voters, they would have got what they wanted. Yet the hard core of them have already been told by Nigel Farage that what Johnson has agreed to isn’t really Brexit. Moreover, throughout the Referendum campaign, for many months afterwards, and even sometimes now, they were given the impression that the negotiations about leaving and about future terms were one and the same thing, and that both would be concluded on the same ‘Brexit day’. Unequivocally, that is not (and was never going to be) true.
Hence, as has been very widely discussed, including in many posts on this blog, if Britain leaves the EU at the end of January 2020 it will not really mean that Brexit has been ‘done’. It will begin a new phase, in which future terms, including future trade terms, are under negotiation and there will be a new kind of potential cliff edge at the end of 2020.
