@gakINGKONG Said 
At least now the UK can finish this Brexit business and move on with their lives. Best wishes to all.
But it's NOT the end of Brexit. Not by a long way.
Sure, it will get Brexit over the finishing line in as much as UK will leave the EU, but then the really hard part begins.
It won't all be 'done' on 31 December. Johnson maintains that he will be able to negotiate a beneficial Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with Brussels by December 2020. This is seriously misleading. The shortest FTA the EU has ever negotiated was with South Korea; this took two and a half years with a further 18 months for approval and ratification. The FTA between the EU and Canada, often cited as a model for the UK, took 9 years to negotiate and will take another 7 years to implement.
Once the UK leaves the EU nothing from the old agreement will apply. We will have to negotiate from the bottom, brick by brick. British and EU negotiators will have to go through thousands of tariff settings to determine the customs duty and technical arrangements which will apply to each product. Companies, unions, investors, farmers, fishers, environmentalists and consumers will lobby intensely throughout the negotiations. The profitability of some of Britain’s most dynamic businesses depends on the technical rules applied in their core market – the EU.
Johnson’s claim that the talks will go quickly because they will be limited to goods is questionable. Services account for over 80 per cent of UK jobs. Many services are embedded in goods and cannot be kept out of the FTA if the UK’s complex just-in-time supply chains are to survive.
EU countries will insist that their competitive farm exports be included. So, FTA negotiators will have to go through the minutiae of plant and animal health as well as tariffs and quotas.
The EU will insist on a “level playing field” for workers’ rights, climate action, environmental and data protection. All this will require lengthy talks and consultations with interested parts of society.
Any attempt to force the pace, in closed doors talks, would come to nought. The EU just won't buy it. Restrictive rules affecting EU residents, scientists, researchers or students in Britain – adopted in the name of taking back control – would weigh heavily on the FTA negotiations.
Furthermore, EU negotiators will call for access to UK fishing grounds by Spanish, French, German, and Danish fishing vessels to be maintained as a condition for opening European markets to UK fish exports.
Britain’s dwindling fisheries sector will be hard to placate if the government cedes to these demands. Other prickly issues, including Gibraltar’s future relations with Spain, are bound to be raised during the negotiations.
Once an FTA has been negotiated, both sides must sign and ratify it. The EU could, in theory, ratify a limited trade agreement without requiring votes in all 27 member states. But national capitals will insist on approving an agreement with a close neighbour and key trading partner like Britain.
Until recently, purely trade aspects of an agreement could be applied provisionally, pending ratification. But the new Commission President, Ursula von den Leyen, has promised that future trade agreements will only be applied provisionally once the European Parliament has given its consent. So, there are no short cuts.
The prime minister would do better to come clean with the British people on the complexity of the task ahead rather than face new accusations of duplicity when his promise that a trade deal with the EU will be concluded in 2020 comes to nought.
Brexit won't end on 31 December. It will be only just beginning.
Dec 14, 2019 @ 11:27:44
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