Some of us see the Brexit story as a moral tale of the inglorious sequel to our past national arrogance and impunity. We, the UK, were the imperial predator and despoiler of the globe; now we are the capital of the offshore, the pariah banker of oligarchs and kleptocrats, with Brexit our protecting wall against unwanted inspection by international rule-based order.
Our European neighbours have shown commendable, indeed remarkable serenity, resolution and stoicism in responding to the shock of Brexit. They have kept faith with their values and rules. They have recognised a threat, and their response is so far coordinated and purposive. Nevertheless, Brexit and what it does to the UK is not nothing. Until yesterday German opinion leaders saw the UK as a bastion or beacon of reason. Now, we are liable be recategorised as a source of contagion, an exemplar of bad practice, a cautionary tale. The EU does not see Brexit as a rebuke to its failings, but as a warning sign of threats and tendencies to which the EU is also not immune and which its own survival requires it to check.
Brexit has not been a rerun of WW2, and New Year 2021 is not another 1945; it does not call for a new UN, a new Bretton Woods, a new NATO or a new EU.
