Expectations

Beyond tired of brexit, like most people however they voted, I still couldn’t describe myself as resigned.

Certainly I would not characterise myself as wanting my MP and the government to push ahead with the current brexit plan to “get it over with” not least because we haven’t even started the trade negotiations with the EU yet so this process is going to run for years.

But I have been trying to work out what to expect next.

There seem to be two scenarios coming into focus: a shitty deal where limits to immigration are prioritised followed by trade in goods or leaving with no deal at all.

Since the UK makes most of its money overseas from trade in services, even with the shotty deal now being discussed, our economy will obviously be damaged and as the negotiations go by, more and more compromises will be required to limit the damage to our economy from setting those two priorities.

Each one of those real-poilitik compromises will be met with horror by those currently cheerleading for brexit. The lack of transparency by the UK government means people have been allowed to keep their illusions so when each and one of those illusions fractures, people will be looking for someone to blame. Never themselves. They will claim that leaving with any deal at all was the mistake, not leaving itself. WTO rules only will become the mantra because unhappiness needs a meaningless slogan to coalesce around.

So politics will stay fundamentally divided and fractious. Society will remain divided and fractious. And people will still split between “remainers” and “leavers”. Economically things will get worse. Nothing will be fixed.

If we leave with no deal at all, then things will get difficult quickly. A developed country will see empty supermarket shelves for the first time in a generation. We will risk medicine shortages and see immediate price rises as WTO tariffs are applied to all imports.

But the world won’t come to an end. We are wealthy and the cost increases won’t stop us eating what we want when we want. Food used to talk cup 30% of people’s disposable income compared to today’s 10% so maybe it will just rise, offset by falling housing costs. Neither will the increased costs stop us taking holidays and living our lives much as today. We will have less but we won’t have nothing. Plenty of people will be significantly worse off. London will be damaged, but it is wealthier and perhaps more able to mitigate that damage.

Our children are maybe now more likely to go and work and live overseas.

We will see a slow decline of our economy relative to the rest of the world. Initially we’ll be able to pretend it’s a worldwide phenomena as we pull the EU down with us, as the US-China trade war starts to bite.

Away from the sheer anger that brexit creates, I’m left with just a sad resignation. For my generation the walls came down, the threat of war receded and we all felt we were going to be richer, healthier and better. For my children’s generation, that is no longer true. The walls are going up, the threat of war is rising and they will be poorer, less healthy and generally worse off.

My expectations are sad.