The point I've been trying to make is that things change and people & institutions adapt over time. Change is never easy though. I went on a consultancy skills many years ago when working for an international consultancy and we worked in groups of 6 or 7. You worked with the same people during the day & in the evening from the start of the course on Sunday, and got a great group dynamic going. I can still picture & remember the names of people in my group, 20 years on, despite the fact we only knew each other for 6 days and never worked together again.
On Thursday morning the course tutors came in and said they were changing the groups and they moved a couple of people out of each group into another. There was uproar, with people actually in tears, and the whole group dynamic broke down. At one of the breaks, they reinstated the old groups and said it was a practical lesson about how change impacts people and that we had to think about these impacts. Even though we knew it was coming, the actual terms of our departure made it a precipitate event, with just days to spare.
Some things won't be as good for sure but other things may be better. No one knows yet though, so no one can say for sure that it's a pending complete disaster or the best thing since sliced bread. As I said, it's like El Alamein; the end of the beginning. Where the relationship goes from here will depend on the desire of the government and the goodwill of the EU. I even reckon the EU might secretly be glad to see the back of us, as I suspect that, being the main counterpart to France & Germany, we'd be the main blocker of closer integration. Now we're finally out, after 5 years of political chaos, perhaps we can start to look forward.
