One of the great fallacies of Brexit is that leaving the EU will make the 52% who voted for it very happy and totally satisfied. Brexit will mean changes in almost every area of life in this country, from the price and sort of food we eat, to travel, the availability of everyday goods, opportunities to study or work overseas as well as wider impacts on the economy, jobs and public services. Nothing and no one will be untouched.
It is therefore, to my mind, simply inconceivable in a nation like ours, stubbornly resistant to change of any kind and always ready to moan about anything that disturbs our routines or ways of doing things, that the 17,410,742 leave voters will uniformly greet the massive coming changes like some sort of liberating army. And to be truly considered successful, all and every Brexit-delivered change must not only be gratefully accepted by leavers, many remainers will also have to be persuaded.
I do not believe for a second that this will happen.
Leaving the EU was always a bad idea. Every leaver is after something different. There will be losers as well as winners, with most people more loser than winner. Remaining in the EEA would have minimised the disruption but the government ruled this out in September last year along with membership of the customs union and have therefore gone for the route with maximum change in the minimum amount of time. It is the highest risk strategy, fraught with dangers and against the wishes of most MPs and Lords. So, even if the government actually achieves Brexit by March 2019 it will still face selling it to a public that really want things to continue as they are, but with fewer immigrants and better public services. Not a vast array of changes that will impact every man, woman and child in the nation and done against a backdrop of less money, fewer jobs and squeezed incomes.
Leaving the EU was always a bad idea. Every leaver is after something different. There will be losers as well as winners, with most people more loser than winner. Remaining in the EEA would have minimised the disruption but the government ruled this out in September last year along with membership of the customs union and have therefore gone for the route with maximum change in the minimum amount of time. It is the highest risk strategy, fraught with dangers and against the wishes of most MPs and Lords. So, even if the government actually achieves Brexit by March 2019 it will still face selling it to a public that really want things to continue as they are, but with fewer immigrants and better public services. Not a vast array of changes that will impact every man, woman and child in the nation and done against a backdrop of less money, fewer jobs and squeezed incomes.
It will be an utter disaster.
