The next year will be a much better signifier of what is to come Brexit-wise than previous ones. Various theoretical positions will be known. Despite none of them being economically beneficial (bar that one which was contingent on destroying our agricultural and manufacturing industries from a Mr. P Minford), we'll at least know roughly what will happen.
Of course, economics is only one thing. We have our democracy and sovereignty to look forward to getting back.
Sovereignty wise, it is a much thinner sovereignty that parliament has than before the decision to join the EEC. This is entirely dependent of any hollowing out of sovereignty that our membership of the EEC/EU, because we'll have got it back. To view sovereignty as the Leave camp do, because Parliament has delegated responsibility to regional bodies (Scottish Parliament, Welsh and NI Assemblies, various English regional governments such as London or the new Metro' Mayors, etc.) it has lost sovereignty. Although the theoretical power exists to abolish all of these, it realistically cannot happen.
Sovereignty has also had to stand up to the actions of an executive who has wanted to bypass it in order to proceed with the job of 'getting sovereignty back'. This battle between two different sovereignties (the sovereignty of our parliament who, before the referendum had no power to stand up for itself, and afterwards had too much power and thus had to be bypassed in order to respect the second type; the sovereignty of the people, where ~52% of the ~72% of the ~72% (percentage of voters who voted leave - percentage of the electorate who voted - percentage of the UK population who be a member of the electorate) voted to leave) is one that will not go away. There has also been a battle inside each sovereignty. For Parliament, this is encapsulated in the different behaviours of MPs. For example: Michael Gove (Conservative, Leave Campaign) voted for Theresa May's deal three times, because he wanted to "enact the will of the people"; whereas Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson (Conservative, Leave Campaign) voted against the same deal twice, because he wanted to "enact the will of the people". Despite both claiming to be "enacting the will of the people", they were voting in different ways. Of course, Mr. Johnson then voted for the deal at the third introduction to Parliament, claiming that he was "enacting the will of the people". Given the confusion amongst the same person about what the people wanted, asking them again was rightly dismissed because to give people another chance to vote in a democratic referendum is un-democratic.
As the idea of what 'sovereignty' meant, so did that of 'democracy'. Brexit only defines democracy in direct terms where the biggest franchised minority gets everything, and the remaining majority does not. (For the 2016 referendum, the biggest proportion of the population was the 18.1m who could not vote.) This can be understood as a populist form, where problems such as tyranny of the majority, rights, and the rest is all up for grab because once we have found the biggest minority, are ignored for simplicity. Checks and balances against such a government are dismissed as being "against the will of the people". In that way, a populist democracy becomes an electoral dictatorship. This is a new development. When Tony Blair was elected in a landslide in '97, '01, and (to a lesser extent) '05, the opposition continued to exist. They didn't simply vote through everything because Labour had won. This was the correct thing to do. In a democracy, the right to continue to argue that doing/not doing a thing is bad/good does not cease once a vote has taken place. It continues for as long as that individual wants it to. The rights of Freedom of Speech extends to the 'loosing' side. The magnitude of Blair's wins did concern people that an electoral dictatorship situation would exist. However, the UK system relied upon (and generally maintained) a set of political constraints that, even when a government had a vast majority, there were certain things that it couldn't do. The past ~4 years has changed this such that the same argument holds far less water when applied to the Johnson government.
The argument "all politicians lie" has existed for ages, but was generally used to be cynical of any promises that politicians made. This use has changed. Now, it is used as a way to dismiss any lies a politician tells. Telling an outright lie does little damage, and actually seems to give politicians a net-benefit. Of course, lying will continue, but with the electorate's tacit consent, it will get worse. Of course, the lies aren't doing any damage to your aims, right up to the point that they do. Then it's too late.
Finally, I genuninley hope I'm wrong about Brexit.
