UK MPs finally approve EU trade agreement, paving way for historic Brexit

A post-Brexit trade deal thrashed out between Britain and the European Union, has been voted in favour by the United Kingdom’s Parliament.

The agreement which now puts into law the deal on a new relationship agreed between the 27-nation EU and the UK last week, was sanctioned on Wednesday.

It now paves the way for an orderly and historic exit from the EU which is expected to come into force on January 1.

MPs in the lower chamber House of Commons voted 521 to 73 in favour of the EU (Future Relationship) Bill on Wednesday, a day before the UK severs ties with the bloc as the Brexit transition period comes to an end.

Reports say Brexit marks the most momentous shift in the country’s recent history and will reverse decades of closer economic, cultural and social integration with the EU, its largest trading partner.

“Historically it’s really significant – it is the first major example of building barriers to trade and to cooperation that we have seen in the modern period,” Simon Usherwood, a professor of politics at the University of Surrey, told Al Jazeera.

“And there’s still a kind of uncertainty regarding whether this is about Britain retreating from the world and pulling up the drawbridge or becoming an international player in the broader sense and becoming a ‘global Britain’,” he added.