After more than 40 years of membership of the EU, Brexit was never going to be easy for the UK, and despite all the political spin of recent days, it would be naïve to think this might be the end of the process.

There remain issues to be resolved, and in time new problems will emerge, especially if the UK diverges away from EU regulations and does new trade deals allowing in goods produced to lower standards. If the UK wants to continue trading with its largest and nearest customer, it is likely to involve a process of endless negotiation.

But perhaps much of this can now be done by civil servants behind closed doors rather than as part of a political wrangling match. With the likes of Boris Johnson, Lord Frost and Liz Truss cast aside, there is a renewed appetite between the UK and EU to work together to resolve differences.

Neither side in the negotiations can look back at the period since the EU referendum in 2016 with any great sense of satisfaction.

On one side we had the EU digging in hard that its single market had to be protected in all scenarios, while on the other, we had the UK led by politicians who believe in some sort of utopia around leading in global free trade.

It remains the case that the best solution to Brexit is that the UK aligns to EU rules around agri food, even if that limits its ability to sign up to deals with non-EU countries in the future.

But with the Tories in power, that isn’t happening, so the Windsor Framework is the best we have for now.

As an industry we must continue to make the case for solutions to the likes of cattle and sheep movements from Britain.

But we also must recognise that the framework locks in unfettered access to both the EU and UK markets for our produce, and as farmers, that is something we should not dismiss lightly.

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