Martin Howe KC, Chairman of Lawyers for Britain and silk, addressed the Bruges Group's October Conference on delivering Brexit. The KC discussed the more technical aspect of ensuring Brexit was truly delivered. Brexit, he said, was not completed, and the 2020 withdrawal was merely the removal of Great Britain from "directly applying EU laws…out of the legal order, out of the single market", and that the current arrangement was a result of poor terms.
He raised examples of the EU legal order remaining in the UK such as retained EU law, the Northern Ireland Protocol (also discussed by Mark Francois MP) - which meant that the rulings of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) would continue to apply to subjects of the United Kingdom. Moreover, he also mentioned how the ECJ's authority over the interpretation of the rights of EU citizens in the UK remained, as well as the payments the UK continues to pay to the EU budget (agreed to by then-PM Theresa May). He reiterated the complexity of replacing existing retained European Union law and how it was not a simple case of 'slash-and-burn' - and there was no option of returning to pre-EEC laws with changes in technology, among others.