Britain's eurosceptic newspapers, after decades of bashing Brussels, celebrated victory in their Friday editions after Brexit finally became reality at the end of 2020, but pro-EU voices dwelt on a "day of sadness".

The BBC and Sky news channels beamed live images of Big Ben in central London striking 11:00 pm (2300 GMT) on Thursday, the moment that Britain ended an 11-month transition period and definitively left the European Union behind.

It was a personal triumph for the likes of anti-EU populist politician Nigel Farage, a prominent "Leave" campaigner in the 2016 referendum who tweeted: "This is a big moment for our country, a giant leap forward. Time to raise a glass. #BrexitAtLast."

The Farage tendency in the mainstream media was exemplified by the Daily Express, whose front-page showed a picture of the White Cliffs of Dover and the headline "Our future. Our Britain. Our destiny".

The Sun newspaper relegated the Brexit story to a front-page box headlined "PM: Britain Brexpects", reporting Prime Minister Boris Johnson's words that Brexit marked a moment for national renewal in which the country would "turbocharge" scientific innovation.

The tabloid splashed instead a graphic of Big Ben with a giant syringe marking 12 o'clock, to publicise its campaign for an army of volunteers to help in Britain's coronavirus vaccination programme.

Indeed the pandemic is a much greater concern for ordinary Britons than the epic Brexit saga, opinion polls show, and other papers riffed on the two stories' competing narratives as the New Year dawned.

"Welcome to 2021 -- and two reasons to hope for a much brighter future," headlined the Daily Telegraph, where Johnson made his name as a Brussels-bashing Europe correspondent in the 1990s.

It was referring to Brexit and to UK regulators' approval of a new Covid-19 vaccine developed in Britain by Oxford University and Cambridge-based AstraZeneca.

The pro-EU Guardian also melded the twin narratives in its front-page coverage, noting Britain had finally quit all EU rules in the midst of a "crisis, without fanfare".

Inside, the left-leaning newspaper called Brexit "a tragic national error".

"Britain is now out of the EU. But this is a day of sadness, not of glory, for we shall always be part of Europe," it said.

The Independent ran with a satirical cartoon portraying leading Brexiteers as various species of fish, evoking how arguments over control of fisheries nearly upended a trade deal between London and Brussels after months of talks.

Johnson was a flounder, "generally out of its depth", while former UK Independence Party (UKIP) leader Farage was drawn as a kipper -- "commonly gutted, pickled or smoked".

The Daily Mail, probably the most virulent of the anti-EU tabloids, had already moved on to focus entirely on the pandemic, after new data showed nearly one million vaccinations have already been administered in Britain.

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Daily Mail