Remember Brexit? At the end of January, as Britain left the European Union, a bold chronicler might have been tempted to pre-write pages for 2020 in the history books. After months of deliberation, acrimonious wrangling and contrasting forecasts, this was the year that it finally happened. The UK, having trudged for four years through repeated promises of sunlit uplands from one side and apocalyptic warnings from the other, would at last find out what lay beyond the EU.
Nobody, whether they proudly waved a Union flag or shed a tear on the night of January 31, could have forecast what lay ahead. Within two months Covid-19 had usurped Brexit’s place at the top of the agenda.
The virus, which delivered blows to growth and employment,
