It was the worst of times, it was the Brexit times

In the dark midwinter as coronavirus rages, Boris Johnson tells his countrymen ‘we have our freedom in our hands’.

Big Ben, a $140m renovation, marks Britain’s official departure from the EU on Thursday (10am Friday AEDT)

It’s the grimmest of times in the United Kingdom, yet amidst the oppressiveness of midwinter and raging coronavirus, Brexiteers are “pleased but not jubilant’’ the country has finally left the European Union.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson tried to rally the mood, telling the nation in a New Year’s Eve address: “This is an amazing moment for this country. We have our freedom in our hands and it is up to us to make the most of it.”

But British New Year and Brexit celebrations were muted or non-existent, with just four per cent of people having pre-planned to meet up with another household, as dire warnings of the rampaging virus continue to cow a mightily fatigued population. Many are off to bed early to snore through the final hours of 2020, marking a dreadful year with the disdain it deserves.

Yet finally, four and a half years after the 2016 referendum delivered the shock result (to some) and the furore claimed two prime ministers, just an hour before midnight, Britain is now a country in charge of its own destiny.

There will be plenty who will be only too happy to say goodbye to the grimness of 2020.

But this was also the year when we rediscovered a spirit of togetherness, of community.

In 2021 we have our freedom in our hands and it is up to us to make the most of it. Happy New Year! pic.twitter.com/gDRXe2SuCb

— Boris Johnson (@BorisJohnson) December 31, 2020

The country’s emancipation was marked early on by an independent and world-leading decision to rollout the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine on December 8, which was two weeks before the EU was embarrassed to bring forward a meeting to make the same choice.

Nearly a million of the over-80s in the UK have now already had their first jab. The Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine will be unleashed on Monday and each week a million Britons will be inoculated.

Unshackled from the over-regulation of Brussels and the influence of the European Court of Justice, the UK can once again make decisions big and small, and even sell the wonkiest or straightest bananas.

Under the 2021 mistletoe of bumping elbows (oh, the memories of a drunken snog), central concerns are to re-establish normality rather than whether mobile phone roaming charges and different queues at European airports will impact travel routines.

Never have the nation’s New Year’s resolutions been so prosaic: a 12-year-old so desperately wanting to head back to the classroom; the young and vibrant hankering for a time of rubbing shoulders at the local pub. A happy gathering of friends around a dinner table without having to whip out a mask would be nice too.

Thoughts of ambitious Brexit opportunities are abstruse. At the very moment of liberty and the ability to forge new trading relations, the nation’s industry is very much on pause.

The British government is extending its doom-laden messaging until the middle of the year, warning of many more months of continuing harsh lockdowns in various virus hotspot regions.

The mutant virus is spreading across the land — one in 12 people in the nation’s capital currently has coronavirus, increasingly the more contagious new strain. More than 55,000 people a day in the UK are testing positive to the virus.

Johnson said in his New Year’s Eve message to the nation: “We know that we have a hard struggle still ahead of us for weeks and months, because we face a new variant of the disease that requires a new vigilance.

“But as the sun rises tomorrow on 2021 we have the certainty of those vaccines.”

Certainly the first few weeks of Britain’s “independence’’ will be focused upon the stretched National Health Service and its filled-to-the-brim hospitals coping with staffing shortages as increasing numbers of medics go into self-isolation. A third of hospitals have more COVID-19 patients at the moment than at any time in the first wave, impacting disastrously on the treatment of others with heart attacks, strokes and cancer. Businesses and the economy are on life-support too.

But Mr Johnson insists the UK will be “free to do things differently, and if necessary better, than our friends in the EU” in 2021 as the country emerges from the pandemic.

So as the New Year heralds, the UK will need the wishes of much good health, nimbleness and creativity for 2021.