33●7:30A.M.,NOV.1, NEWRY,COUNTIES
ARMAGHANDDOWN,NORTHERNIRELAND
Inthe3 minutes73-year-oldJazzMcDonnelltakesto
drivebacktohissheepfarmafterhisconstitutional
throughthefoggyhills,heleavestheEU,enters
it,andleavesagain.TheIrishborderis a crooked
squiggle,andhislandstraddlesit: 270 acresoflush,
hillyfarmlandintheU.K.’sNorthernIreland, 500
intheEU’sRepublicofIreland.Oncehome,Jazz—
christened James—eats some hot porridge before set-
ting out to move some rams. It’s mating season.
The McDonnell family has raised sheep here for
centuries. But overnight, the animals now face an
export tariff to the EU of almost 50%. At the pre-
Brexit price of £80 ($99) per head, McDonnell just
about broke even. After costs—feed, diesel, rent—he
made a profit of £1 a head. With sheep prices about
to plummet, and without the EU subsidies that made
up about half his income, he’ll go out of business.
“Come on, Toby!” McDonnell calls, calling his
collie into his van. During the Troubles, as the
decades of violence between Northern Ireland and
the Republic of Ireland are known, British soldiers
blew these roads up to force drivers onto the main
routes and through manned checkpoints. Former
Prime Minister Theresa May spent 19 months bro-
kering a deal that would keep the border open and
peaceful while still delivering Brexit, a process that
ultimately failed and put Johnson on course for the
job. Ireland’s prime minister, Leo Varadkar, is riding
out no-deal for now, taking his chances that the U.K.
will return to the negotiating table before the EU
can punish him for failing to hold down its frontier.
McDonnell arrives at a hillside plot, and Toby
scampers up the incline, out of view. Suddenly a
herd of rams rushes over the lip. Once they’re in
the back, McDonnell slams the door behind them
and drives down narrow roads to a nearby field,
crossing the Irish border.
Strictly speaking, this is now smuggling.
Livestock entering the EU from a non-EU country
must be checked for health reasons. The thought
of going through customs points a dozen or more
times every day makes McDonnell shudder. Checks
mean infrastructure, people in uniforms: targets
for violence. He releases the sheep. If no-deal per-
sists, he’ll have to slaughter them all.● 8 A.M., LONDON
In an office just a few steps from the Monument
to the Great Fire of 1666, Mark Hemsley hears the
ring of an old-fashioned bell and looks at a wall of
screens overhead. Financial markets have opened
in Amsterdam and London. He wants this moment
to be as boring as possible.
Hemsley is president of the European division of
CboeGlobalMarkets,whichrunstheworld’slarg-
estpan-Europeanequitiesexchange.Matching
buyersandsellersfromacrosstheglobeinsplit-
second transactions worth billions of euros each
day is a part of the plumbing of Britain’s financial
sector, 7% of the nation’s economic output.
This year, EU regulators looked like they were
going to demand that European shares be traded▲ Practice is the
easy part as Chi-chi
Nwanoku preps for a
post-Brexit European
tour; the paperwork is
a nightmare