Five things we should focus on now we have left the EU

Getting to Brexit Day was the easy part – now the real work begins, writes John Rentoul

Social care is the single biggest challenge in domestic policy (Getty Images)

Everyone knows that Boris Johnson hasn’t really “got Brexit done”, but we are no longer a member of the EU, and that means that the intense media focus of the past three and a half years will now be directed at other things. What might we worry about instead?

1. Leaving the EU single market

Maintaining public interest in the EU trade negotiations is going to be hard, but they are the important bit of our separation from the single market. As Michael Gove honestly accepted on Friday, frictionless trade will not be possible under the Brexit model he and Boris Johnson favour, which has to allow for divergence in future.

How much friction that will mean after 31 December this year is the big question, and will no doubt be decided by a similar combination of bluster and brinkpersonship that got us to the withdrawal agreement, but with less constitutional drama.

2. Levelling up the country

“Levelling up” those parts of the country that are less prosperous than London and the southeast is one of Johnson’s phrases that has stuck. It sounds rather New Labour, which is no coincidence, but as Tony Blair and Gordon Brown discovered, delivering even modest egalitarian promises is really hard.

It looks as if Johnson will go ahead with HS2, which some see as essential to boosting growth outside the southeast, but smaller transport projects are certainly more important in the medium term.

It won’t be long before the phrase is thrown back at the prime minister after every announcement, just as Theresa May’s “just about managing” and “burning injustices” were thrown back at her.

3. Social care

Probably the single biggest challenge in domestic policy – although that is assuming that new money starts to make a difference to the NHS. Johnson claimed to have a social care policy ready to go before the election, but it did not survive the “if in doubt chuck it out” procedure for drawing up the manifesto.

Of course, social care is never urgent. It is more like chronic societal toothache: we have been distracted from it by the intensity of the Brexit crisis over the past three and a half years, but now it is time to go to the dentist.

4. Climate change

The world’s representatives will burn kerosene in the lower stratosphere to arrive by jet at the big UN conference in Glasgow in November, which will be the focus of a global debate about climate change.

5. Look out for populism

Expect populist measures on 1 January 2021, as soon as we stop being bound by EU law. Tampons being zero-rated for VAT could be top of the list.