Lift Up Your Eyes
16th December 2020
ZMan looks at Brexit.
It is hard to believe, but the British government is now into the fifth year of negotiations with the EU over withdrawing from the union. The Brexit referendum passed in June of 2016 and since then there have been two new Prime Ministers and one national election, all driven by the issue. Of course, there have been lots of promises to get the deal done, but it has been one delay after another. They have just announced another delay in order to keep negotiating a deal that will never come.
To provide some perspective on all of this, consider the Peace of Westphalia, which ended the Thirty Years War. The war was one of the most devastating and complex events in European history. After all sides were exhausted from war, a conference was arranged for the belligerents to hash out their differences. A total of 109 delegations arrived and it took two years. In other words, one of the most complex treaties in history took less time that these Brexit negotiations.