Fair or foul, the deed is done.

Britain and the European Union have reached a deal on Brexit, announced British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, reported CNN. "Johnson claimed that the UK had achieved a 'Canada style' trade deal worth 660 billion pounds (US $893 billion) and addressed the agreement on fisheries -- a key point of contentions in the negotiations --  saying that the UK had taken back full control of its waters." Britain had to agree to customs checks between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK so that there is no hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland which is a part of the euro zone. The Protestant Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) of Northern Ireland was totally against such an arrangement because it sees this as closer relation with the Catholic Republic than with the rest of the UK. However, Johnson had no choice because Democrat leaders in the US, including Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi and President-elect Joe Biden, warned there would be no trade deal with the US if the Good Friday Agreement, which ended years of civil strife in the North, was not respected. One big sticking point was on the rights of European boats to fish in British territorial waters. Apparently, British boats will have increased quotas from now on but final details are still unknown. "The UK government's Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) forecast that, with a deal, Britain would see a loss of output of around 4% over 15 years compared to remaining in the EU," reported Reuters. The EU will lose around 0.38% and 280,000 jobs. The financial services industry is the largest business sector in the UK, giving it a trade surplus of $88 billion. "Under a system known as equivalence, access to EU markets will not be granted to banks, insurers and other financial firms based in Britain unless their home rules are deemed by Brussels to be 'equivalent', or as robust as regulations in the block." Britain appeared to negotiate in bad faith because Boris Johnson has always been highly critical of the EU and the dislike is mutual. In order to force the EU to give in, Johnson passed an Internal Market Bill which empowered  his government to change parts of the withdrawal agreement unilaterally. Instead, it was Johnson who got a huge dose of reality when 3,000 trucks piled up at Dover when France closed its border to stop a new mutant coronavius discovered in the UK and "British supermarkets warned of shortage of some goods just days before Christmas". This is a hard Brexit and there is "an avalanche of new trade barriers that is coming", wrote Faisal Islam. What is chastening is that Britain's trade with Europe is $893 billion and it has the liberty to agree deals with the US and the rest of the world, while India's total trade was just over $800 billion in 2019. Britain has a population of just 68 million, while ours 1,300 million. We really are dirt poor.