The parliamentary leverage of hardline Brexiteers will also diminish after the election. Johnson needed his party’s hardline Brexiteers to elect him as leader and keep him in office without a majority in Parliament. But all Tory MPs have now committed in writing to vote unconditionally for Johnson’s withdrawal agreement. If they win a majority, the Tories will pass the withdrawal agreement. And once that has happened, future negotiations on EU trade, including the transition arrangements, will no longer be subject to parliamentary approval until a deal is completed, whether in 2020, 2021, or beyond.
The upshot is that UK-EU economic relations will remain almost unchanged for a long period, whatever happens in this month’s election. If Johnson loses, Brexit will be delayed and probably canceled. In the likelier event that Johnson wins, Brexit will go ahead and cause Britain long-term damage. But for the next year or two, the worrywarts really should calm down.
Anatole Kaletsky is chief economist and co-chairman of Gavekal Dragonomics. A former columnist at the Times of London, the International New York Times and the Financial Times, he is the author of "Capitalism 4.0, The Birth of a New Economy," which anticipated many of the post-crisis transformations of the global economy.