I wanted to remain in the EU – but now we’re out of it I want to focus on the deal for our future

Brexit has happened. On 31 January the United Kingdom left the European Union. Whether you voted in 2016 for this outcome or, like me, campaigned to remain, the issue now is what kind of relationship do we, as a major European country, want to build with our neighbours.

I have not changed my mind about the side I took in the referendum. But that decision has been taken. The 27 remaining members of the EU have, with sadness, also accepted the democratic choice that the people of the UK have made.

Gossip about rejoining is a distraction. Our departure is a reality now embodied in both domestic and European law. The only route back into the club would be through a formal accession process under Article 49 of the EU treaties, without the opt-outs and rebates that we were able to negotiate while we were members. That is hardly an enticing prospect. In any case, there would be precious little public enthusiasm to revisit the arguments and divisions of 2016 all over again.

Those facts have implications for the argument about extending the transitional period. The truth is, the extension period is a pragmatic, practical judgement about whether businesses and government agencies need more than another six months to prepare for a future in which, deal or no deal, there will be greater friction than now in cross-border trade, with new compliance arrangements required by both UK and EU authorities.

The government has already said that it will phase in new customs arrangements gradually after 1 January, to give businesses (and for that matter government agencies) time to adjust. That is sensible, especially as Covid-19 has gobbled up any spare planning capacity both in business and in Whitehall. The advantage of a formal extension is that it would guarantee reciprocity by the EU and delay the imposition of non-customs measures like extra food and livestock checks.

I am more optimistic than many about the chances of a deal being agreed this year. The UK government wants a free trade agreement. The EU says that is conditional on not diluting EU standards.

In the real world, UK voters will insist that UK standards remain high. This is a government which won election on the basis of “blue collar Conservatism”, appealing to traditional Labour voters in the north, midlands and Wales. The prime minister wants to bring those voters who lent him their support last December into the Conservative column for good, not drive them away. So he’s not going to axe employment rights.

Nor is he going to slash environmental standards at the very time he’s preparing to host world leaders for a 2021 summit on climate change and when the environment is the issue that most energises younger voters.

The Covid crisis has seen unprecedented government financial support for business, in the UK and throughout Europe – measures readily approved by the European Commission. But that’s very different from a policy of permanent state subsidy, which the government could not afford and which would run counter to its belief in enterprise and free trade.

A deal is possible, provided there is the political will on both sides to compromise. It would need the EU to move away from demanding that on industrial subsidies the UK signs up to EU rules not just as they are now but whatever they might become in the future. It should be possible for both parties to agree a definition of the standards to which they would stick, a mechanism for deciding whether there had been a breach and the penalty for that happening.

Such a deal is attainable. It would mean a more distant relationship with the EU than I would prefer, but consistent with what the government has aimed for, and certainly better for UK business than trading with Europe as we do with China, on World Trade Organisation terms, with more checks, inspections and red tape.

Above all, a deal would make it possible for the UK and the EU to finalise their divorce without recriminations.

Every European country faces threats which ignore national frontiers: pandemics, climate change, terrorism and organised crime. Russia and China deride western democracy and deploy both hard and soft power to promote their alternative models of political development. The government is right to signal that they want to build a global alliance of democracies, but such an alliance won’t make sense if it has a Europe-shaped hole in the middle.

The strategic as well as the economic interest of the United Kingdom lies in negotiating a deal with the EU and then working with those democratic allies and neighbours to shape a different but close partnership for the future.

Sir David Lidington was the chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and minister for the Cabinet Office between 2018 and 2019. He also served as minister of state at the Foreign & Commonwealth Office from 2010 until 2016