UK set to leave the EU on Friday

The United Kingdom is set to leave the European Union on Friday night following a Brexit drama that lasted for more than 3 years. 

The UK who now faced an uncertain future following Brexit will slip away an hour before midnight from the club it joined in 1973, moving into the no man’s land of a transition period that preserves membership in all but name until the end of this year.

Brexit means the EU will be deprived of 15% of its economy, its biggest military spender and the world’s international financial capital of London. The divorce will shape the fate of the United Kingdom — and determine its wealth — for generations to come.

This is the moment when the dawn breaks and the curtain goes up on a new act, Prime Minister Boris Johnson will say in a television address, though he has given few clues about his post-Brexit plans beyond inspirational words.

This is the dawn of a new era, Johnson, one of the main leaders of the “Leave” campaign in the 2016, will say.

Beyond the symbolism of turning its back on 47 years of membership, little will actually change until the end of 2020, by which time Johnson has promised to strike a broad free trade agreement with the EU, the world’s biggest trading bloc.

To some, Brexit is a dream “independence day” for a United Kingdom escaping what they cast as a doomed German-dominated project that is failing its 500 million population.

Opponents believe Brexit is a folly that will weaken the West, torpedo what is left of the United Kingdom’s global clout, undermine its economy and ultimately lead to a more insular and less cosmopolitan set of islands in the northern Atlantic.

‘NEW DAWN’
“A New Dawn for Britain,” the Daily Mail said on its front page and the Sun’s headline was “Our Time Has Come”. The pro-EU Guardian had a different slant: “Small island,” its headline said, adding it was the biggest gamble in a generation. 

Johnson will chair a cabinet meeting in Sunderland, the first city to declare support for leaving the EU in the June 2016 referendum. Brexiteers will celebrate on Parliament Square while some opponents of Brexit are also due to gather.

A Union Jack in the building of the European Council in Brussels will be lowered at 7 p.m. time (1800 GMT) on Friday, and put away with the flags of non-EU countries.

With sorrow, some support for Brexit and even hope of a return, Europeans from across the EU bade farewell.

I am very sorry that the United Kingdom is exiting. I think it is a very, very bad thing for Europe, for the United Kingdom, for everything,” said Sara Invitto, from Milan. Goodbye!