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Now, though, the prime minister’s approval ratings have recovered, powered largely by the public’s enthusiasm about the vaccine rollout.

Sixty-seven percent of those surveyed said they thought Britain had performed better on vaccinations than E.U. countries

Significantly, a slight plurality of those surveyed — 40 percent — said they thought Brexit had helped improve Britain’s handling of the pandemic, while 14 percent said it had made it worse, and 38 percent thought it had made no difference.

But Mr. Goodwin said one consequence of the vaccine success is that there are few signs of significant numbers of people rethinking the wisdom of Brexit or suffering the acute regret — or as he called it, “Bregret” — that some expected.

The monthslong shutdown of much of Britain’s economy will also complicate the task of identifying the negative effects of Brexit, since they are likely to be lost in a sea of red ink.

“Brexit doesn’t solve those problems,” Mr. Frost added, “but it does give us means to solve them, to move on, to get a grip but also to reform our attitudes and become a country that can deal with problems again.”

Finally, Downing Street calculated that by now politicians would simply want to move on and that compromise rather than conflict would ultimately hold sway. That was perhaps the biggest miscalculation of all.

But with a lengthy extension on the table and a clear parliamentary majority against no-deal that fear is off the table, at least for now. The cliff edge is no longer a cliff edge

The divide is no longer simply between Brexiteers and remainers; it is between hardline Brexiteers and those who are accused of selling out for a bad deal.

Brexit was a political project based on the idea that identity politics could answer technocratic questions. If the technocratic question keeps proving problematic, you just need to have more faith in your identity. It was like trying to unlock a door with a slice of bread.

It said, in a not legally binding manner, that Parliament would back the Brexit deal if “alternative arrangements” were found for the backstop. What were these alternative arrangements? How do you promise to keep a border open while simultaneously not promising to keep a border open? Brady couldn’t say. Neither could the prime minister or any other member of her government. They had no idea what they were doing. They just needed some words, any words, that could win majority support in the Commons. The fact that the specific words they chose made no sense was an advantage: If the amendment had made sense, someone would have taken offense at its implications

The most common idea among Brexiteers is that they will use “high-tech solutions” to remove the need for checks at the border. But the technology they are wishing for does not exist anywhere on Earth. It is science fiction.

Not only did Brady’s proposition have no meaning, it was common knowledge before it was voted on that it could not be delivered

That’s what made the debate so truly pitiful. It was a return to the world of fairy tales and hallucinations, of the kind of quasi-religious nationalist politics that have fueled the Brexit project from the start. British politicians were confronted with reality and given a chance to fix the problems with Brexit instead of pretending there weren’t any, and they once again fled back into mythmaking

The country is now on the verge of disaster. On March 29, unless something is done, Britain will fall out the European Union without a deal. That will affect every aspect of the economy. It’s likely to block cargo  at the border; pulverize agricultural exports; trigger shortages of food, medicine and radioactive isotopes; spark employment chaos by suddenly canceling the mutual recognition of qualifications between British and European institutions; halt the legal basis for data transfer overnight; and lead to massive and sudden flows of immigration in both directions. The list goes on and on. There is no part of society that is unaffected. And yet not only does the British political class not seem to understand the consequences of what it is doing, it is lost in populist fantasies instead of addressing the cold reality

Britain is one of the richest and most advanced democracies in the world. It is currently locked in a room, babbling away to itself hysterically while threatening to blow its own kneecaps off. This is what nationalist populism does to a country.

Can we go it alone? Did we ever? Are we, as the heavily memed That Mitchell and Webb Look quote goes, the baddies?

it is, ironically, Britain’s global profile that has diminished its ability to focus on internal nation-building. “The British state is a machine for running and exploring the world,” he said. “It doesn’t work very well when it comes to the business of the modern nation.”

inally exposed is the unbridgeable gap, both economic and cultural, between centre and peripheries, between the winners and the losers. There is a double nihilism about Brexit. There are many who feel like they have nothing to lose from a no-deal scenario, while also savouring the prospect of trouble ahead. This is what happens when a country is fed a diet of crisis as glamorous film reel. You cannot fight this appetite for martyrdom with technical arguments about processing times at Dover: these perverse fantasies can only be vanquished by an actual crisis

From the beginning, Brexit created its own momentum. Once the question was asked – in or out? – all the grievances, justified or not, could be projected on it, with “in” being widely seen as a vote for the status quo. Within this frame, nothing else matters – not economic predictions, not warnings about medicines running out, nor threats of the need to stockpile foods. The remain campaign could not have done anything differently: it lost the moment the question was asked.

maybe, in the end, we will finally believe that immigration is necessary for an economy and an NHS to function, that the inequality between the south-east and the rest of Britain is unsustainable, that our political class is over-pedigreed and under-principled. We might even believe that other crises, such as climate change, are real, too.

Maybe, in the end, the country outside Europe will find its stride by confronting its issues rather than blaming them on others, and forging its own way. But there is only one way to find out. What a shame Brexit is that path

When she failed to get the mandate for a hard Brexit that she sought at the 2017 election, she might have switched strategy and attempted to reach out to the opposition at that point. She instead doubled down on her original, fatal strategy and made herself a hostage of the DUP and the Tory ultras on her backbenches.

She is the product of a political culture that tends to emphasise the adversarial over the consensual. It is expressed in the architecture of a parliament that sits the two sides confronting each other.

This is especially true of a Tory party that reveres Margaret Thatcher above all its other leaders since Winston Churchill. The Conservative party is in love with the concept of the battling leader and rather disdains the idea of the healing leader.

Pressure is building within Labour for the party to take an unambiguous stand on the other side of the barricades and become an anti-Brexit party. That pressure will be increased when the Euros see large numbers of previous Labour voters desert the party for the Lib Dems, Greens and Change UK. If a general election hasn’t happened by September, Labour’s party conference is highly likely to force its reluctant leadership to make a no-qualifications commitment to a fresh referendum

The chances of this concluding with no Brexit or a no-deal Brexit are both rising sharply.

Enthusiasts like Boris Johnson, the former foreign secretary and frontman of the 2016 referendum campaign for Brexit, argued that Britain could have its cake and eat it. His colleague, Michael Gove, who is now environment secretary, insisted that Britain held “all the cards and we can choose the path we want,” while another supporter of withdrawal, David Davis, a former Brexit secretary, said that there would be “no downside to Brexit, only a considerable upside.”

“The last two or three generations have been left in a sort of time vacuum,” he added, “where they are still living in the past, with the idea that they are an empire, they won the Second World War and they can decide what they want.”

“In Denmark in 1864 there was a feeling that, ‘If this is reality, we deny reality’ — the view that it shouldn’t be like this, and if it is like this, it is wrong.

“The Brexiteers think, ‘We won the war but we lost the peace and we are going to win it back,’” he added. “They will be surprised when they try to resurrect the empire.”

“Sometimes there are events that have an effect as a catalyzer to open your eyes to the reality around you,

Might Brexit, a similarly interminable riddle, produce some sort of a benign renewal?Professor Ostergaard thinks it could, if Britain acknowledges reality and accepts its scaled-down modern status. He notes that, in forcing Denmark to come to terms with its true size, 1864 was the foundation of the small but successful contemporary Danish state.

“It was the most important point, completely dominating everything,” he said. “It was a defeat, but in the defeat the beginning of a success story, and of a national story as a small power.”

While Trump said he had great respect for Merkel, he accused her of making “a catastrophic mistake,” which triggered Brexit.

"We’re gonna work very hard to get it done quickly and done properly. Good for both sides."

Trump's remarks stand in contrast to President Obama's warning before the June vote that Britain would be at the “back of the queue” for a trade deal if it voted to leave.

“I was delighted to hear Mr. Trump speak so positively about Brexit,” U.K. Independence Party MP Douglas Carswell told FoxNews.com. “It means so much to me -- and to the millions of Brits who voted to leave the EU.  It is good to know that our American ally will help us make it work.”

Trump’s remarks come as Prime Minister Theresa May is set to make a major speech on the subject Monday, in which she is expected to call for a so-called “hard Brexit”

“As is the case with Brexit, the best way of defending Europe, which is rather what Mr. Trump has invited us to do, is to remain united, to remain as a bloc, not to forget that the strength of the Europeans lies in their unity,” he said, according to the Journal.

“Europe needs to start meeting its responsibilities as part of the wider West -- and post-Brexit Britain can be part of making that happen,” he said.

British voters thought they were rebelling against a remote political class when they vetoed that class’s desire to remain in the EU. But Britain’s political class knew that, despite frequent griping about Brussels overreach, British voters are fundamentally European and are better off inside the European club.

Only thanks to the economic gains from EU membership—yes, there are quite a few—could Britain barely sustain the socialized health system its public treats as a national religion, to name one example. British voters would never accept the radical trade liberalization a successful Brexit would require, to name another.

The root of Britain’s Brexit derangement since then has been the tension between what the electorate said about itself and what Britain’s politicians know from experience about their voters

Those voters succeeded in giving their politicians a good fright, to the point that substantial numbers of lawmakers in both major parties have fretted for two years about the implications of “betraying Brexit.” This suppressed the sort of politicking Britain needed around Brexit by deterring lawmakers from arguing, say, for the reversal of Brexit if they believe that is the right thing to d

What was missing all along was a willingness by large enough swathes of the public—now represented in Parliament by parties touting either Continental-style Christian democracy or 1970s-style socialism—to embrace genuine change.

The real education British voters have received since 2016 concerns not only how deeply EU rules had reached into every nook and cranny of the British economy, but how many things any modern state has to be prepared to do.

This has led in turn to an awkward recognition that Britain’s long-atrophying national government lacks the technical expertise to do much of this stuff itself.

This complexity is the source of the power of the ham-fisted administrative apparatus voters claim to hate and of the allegedly aloof politicians they keep trying to oust. Despite their oft-stated frustrations, they keep demanding more services of one sort or another from government

The former Speaker is stepping down as an MP after representing the constituency of Buckingham for the Conservatives since 1997.

In recent months, he has been accused of bending the rules to allow rebel backbench MPs such as Dominic Grieve and Hilary Benn to constrain the government’s room for manoeuvre – including by passing the so-called Benn act, which forced Johnson to request a delay to Brexit.

Bercow said: “I respect the prime minister and he has the right to do what he did also in the House of Commons. But my job was to stand up for the rights of the House of Commons. No apology for championing the rights of parliament.”

The battle over Brexit will partly be one of narratives. On Tuesday, Mrs. May will fire her opening shots.

But there aren’t any compelling ones

In short, if May wins the no-confidence vote by a comfortable margin, and if she nonetheless fails to get her compromise through, Brexit will probably be postponed or put to a new vote. Britain might exercise its right to freeze the exit process and then never return to the negotiating table. Or it could freeze and hold a new referendum.

The third possibility is that May wins today’s vote, but only by a narrow margin. This seems quite likely: Let’s give it 50 percent. This outcome would deprive May of any hope that she had the political strength to get her compromise deal through Parliament. This would force a consideration of the alternatives laid out in option two: Norway, Canada, and so on. The outcome would be the same: Either an indefinite postponement or a referendum. So all 50 percentage points in option three flow into the postpone or revote bucket, bringing the cumulative total to 60 percent.

"Not only is it possible to include financial services in a trade deal, but this is very much in our mutual interest to do so."But Donald Tusk appeared to reject the UK proposals. The EU says the UK will be treated like any other "third country" after Brexit.Asked about the EU guidelines, which also warn of the "negative economic consequences" of Brexit, Mr Hammond said: "It does not surprise me remotely that what they have set out this morning is a very tough position. That's what any competent, skilled and experienced negotiator would do."

The leaders of the remaining 27 EU states must approve the plans at a Brussels summit on 22 March, setting the template for chief negotiator Michel Barnier for talks with the UK about their future relationship.The UK is due to leave the EU at the end of March 2019, and both sides have said they would like a deal on their future relationship to be agreed by this autumn to allow time for parliaments to approve the deal before Brexit happens.

The European Parliament document, which may be changed before it is adopted, says non-EU members - even if very closely aligned to the bloc - cannot expect the same rights and benefits as EU members.

That would be a problem for any London government, because a majority of people in Northern Ireland want to stay in the United Kingdom, but it is particularly poisonous for Mrs. May. That is because her minority government depends on the support of Northern Ireland’s hard-line Democratic Unionist Party, for which keeping its place in the United Kingdom is an existential matter.

Mrs. May’s other option is to play hardball and hope that the national leaders of the European Union retreat from the position proposed on Wednesday, at least allowing this issue to be fudged a little longer.

Another issue in the current talks: How can the EU retaliate if the U.K. decides to depart from the bloc's regulations in a way that gives British businesses a competitive advantage?

Brexit deadlines have come and gone, but leaders of the main political groups in the European Parliament say they will not be able to ratify a deal unless they have it by midnight Sunday.

What happens if the EU and the U.K. can't agree on a new trade deal? The U.K. will begin trading under World Trade Organization rules, which means both sides will be free to slap tariffs on a variety of products the other produces.

Why is this so difficult? Is this about something bigger? It's about different values and different visions.

Why should Americans or anyone outside Europe care about this? The EU has many flaws. Its critics see it as hopelessly bureaucratic and something of a gravy train of sinecures for Eurocrats. But it is also a pillar — along with NATO — of the post-World War II architecture that America played a major role in designing.

How will U.K. travel, work and immigration change next year? Brexit was won, in part, on the pledge to take back control of borders and immigration from the EU. Britons will still be able to travel visa-free to most EU countries for up to 90 days in any 180-day period next year, but in 2022, they will have to apply for visa waivers.

"I cannot tell you whether there will be a deal or not, but I can tell you that there is a path to an agreement," she said Wednesday. "The path may be very narrow, but it is there and it is therefore our responsibility to continue trying."

What if there is a deal? That would be a relief to most U.K. businesses as there would be less disruption. But there would still be customs checks for the first time in decades, which is expected to slow trade across the English Channel.

Are the U.K. government and businesses ready for this fundamental change in the relationship? No. British businesses are furious that the government has not spelled out exactly how they need to prepare for these two possibilities.

Being outside the single market could damage Britain’s important financial services sector and is likely to hit the value of the pound again, at least temporarily.

We don’t want the E.U. to fail, we want it to prosper economically and politically, and we need to persuade our allies that a strong new partnership with the U.K. will help the E.U. to do that.”

A week ago, Mrs. May said in a television interview that post-Brexit Britain would not be able to keep “bits” of its European Union membership.

Membership in the customs union would mean that Britain would have to obey European Union regulations on manufacturing standards and would be banned from making separate trade deals with countries

two main priorities are ending the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice over British law, and restoring British control over its borders and immigration, including from the European Union

Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the opposition Labour Party, said that Mr. Hammond “appears to be making a sort of threat to the European community

Britain already runs a significantly higher yearly deficit than most European countries, about 4.4 percent of gross domestic product, and its cumulative debt is estimated at nearly 85 percent of G.D.P. Mainstream economists — under fire for wrongly predicting an immediate recession after the Brexit vote last June — say those figures are likely to worsen as the pound falls and the economy slows

Under David Cameron, the Tories came to rediscover what Labour seems to have forgotten, namely that elections are fought and won on the centre ground. It is possible to nudge the dial a little, but victory can only be achieved by straddling the centre while appeasing your core.

this is a lesson that is deep rooted within the party. One of Cameron’s greatest strengths was his longevity; as leader for over a decade, he was able to make significant progress in reshaping the parliamentary party in his own image

One of the outcomes of the referendum has been to prompt a new realignment within the party. The old Thatcherite v one-nation split, which admittedly has long been on the wane, has now firmly recrystallised around the new labels of Remainer and Leaver. So the present leadership contest is essentially a battle between one-nation Conservatives with only Liam Fox, the stand-alone candidate from the old school.

It will be one-nation Tories who will be in charge of making Brexit a reality.

Brexit can only be part of the solution. An agenda of social reform, which addresses some of the frustrations and divisions that the vote unmasked, is politically necessar

the referendum debate has provided the rationale and opportunity (given Labour’s dire state) for Cameron Conservatism to be fully realised.

First, it requires a more robust one-nation vision. One that moves away from offering cosy reassurances to metropolitan liberals that the Conservatives are no longer the “nasty party” (which was essentially what legalising gay marriage did) to one that addresses the concerns of those in Britain’s deindustralised heartlands

, a one-nation Conservative agenda cannot be seen to enact a divide, as much of Thatcher’s social reform did, between the deserving and undeserving poor or, worse, heed the Ukip agenda, creating a division between immigrants and the indigenous population.

When Conservatives such as Gove talk about social reform, they tend to centre on the individual, policies that help people realise their potential through opportunity. But surely, if the referendum has revealed anything, political capital needs to be realised at a community rather than individual level.

Second, the fate of whoever wins the leadership will depend almost entirely on how he or she negotiates Brexit and specifically, what is crucially the central plank of the deal – the balancing of freedom of movement with the freedom to trade. This will not be easy

If people start feeling that Brexit has not worked for them and do not soon see increases in wages, improved access to social services and a restriction on immigration then the political backlash will begin in earnest

If the public gets any whiff of a whitewash or if the government is seen to have sold Britain short in any way, the narrative of the “Great Betrayal” will be scripted long before the election.

Third, the fortunes of one-nation Conservatism will depend largely on the fortunes of the Labour party.

if under new leadership, Labour was somehow able to resuscitate itself and make a direct charge for the centre ground, a credible revival is still possible.

Cameron inadvertently has achieved his chief goal: to stop the Tories banging on about Europe.