Brexit will be a disaster. Of that I am more convinced with every passing day. The government is making such a mess of it that sometimes I think it is actually their deliberate strategy so that at some point just before the whole Brexit thing collapses under pressure from all of its contradictions, they can pull back and call a halt. Even the Future Partnership papers do not really seem serious, as if they are simply a half-hearted attempt to look as if we intend to leave when actually we don't.
Vince Cable, speaking the other day (HERE) said he could see Brexit unravelling partly because of the "sheer practical difficulties" and I believe this may well happen. For some time I have been thinking about all of the practical difficulties involved in leaving the EU and what needs to be done over really quite a short time period. So, I have added a page to this blog (HERE) setting out a to-do list for the government. There is also a link to it in the menu bar above.
Taken together Brexit will involve the biggest shake up in the way this country trades and operates that anyone can remember. Brexiteers seem to think this will all happen very smoothly - and no doubt some things will - but looking at the list the potential for things to go badly wrong is high, almost guaranteed. When attention shifts from position papers to implementation, the government will be overwhelmed with all of the practical difficulties of managing change on a massive scale.
The newspapers will be full of Brexit related issues for years and will blame either the government and Brexit (The Guardian, The Times, etc) or the EU itself for not giving us what we want (The Mail, The Telegraph, The Sun). Opinion will polarise even more than it is now.
The EU was perhaps always a boil that had to be lanced and Brexit may well do it, proving once and for all that we cannot prosper outside the European family. We can survive but is this what people really want? I don't think so.
