Brexit, as a political project, is over.

It may still exist in law, in trade red tape, in regulatory headaches. But in the places that matter most—security, foreign policy, and strategic alignment—it’s already unraveling.

I couldn’t find the note.

Not a note in the traditional sense—one of those Substack dispatches I post to keep the threads alive, to keep the conversation moving. It’s buried somewhere now, lost in the churn of constant writing, where one post leads into the next and the origins begin to blur.

It was a back-and-forth with someone from the UK—a reader, and very much on our side. I had written that the end of Brexit was near. He agreed, maybe even wanted it more than I did. But he pushed back. “Don’t say that just to give us hope,” he told me.

A fair warning. But I meant what I said: It starts with defense cooperation. Once that foundation is laid, Brexit will begin to lose its meaning—not all at once, but inevitably.

That doesn’t mean I’m blind to the bureaucratic slog ahead. The machinery of trade, standards, and legal alignment is hard enough to manage from inside a union. Doing it from the outside—while pretending the gap doesn’t matter—is a prolonged, grinding form of pain. And that pain isn’t going anywhere for a while.

Once the UK and EU begin working shoulder to shoulder on defense, something subtle—but decisive—will start to shift. The bad blood that’s lingered since 2016—the meetings where bureaucrats show up not to collaborate, but to obstruct—will begin to recede. Not because anyone wants to admit they were wrong, but because ego-driven obstruction eventually becomes too expensive to sustain.

From petty vengeance to quiet pragmatism, the pivot will come. Slowly at first.

And when it does, it will be the best thing to happen to the United Kingdom in a long time. More than to the EU, frankly. But make no mistake: Europe is stronger with Britain at its side than standing apart, arms folded, watching from across the Channel.

That pivotal moment is now in motion.