The Irish border issue is indicative of a far wider problem for Brexit. The negotiations are going unbelievably badly and every day exposes the weakness of our position and the ignorance and incompetence of our Brexiteers in cabinet. It must be clear now that we are the supplicants and we are not going to get a deal which replicates anything like what we have now.
The £50 billion divorce bill will be paid over decades eating in to the savings we are supposed to be making in our EU contributions.
We are certainly going to have to create many if not all of the agencies that we will lose access to after Brexit. Euratom, Europol, Aviation and Market safety agencies and so on. This will also take up more of the savings, permanently. If we manage to regain access to some European bodies we will pay through the nose for the privilege.
The economy is forecast to be £72 billion smaller by 2021 and based on government revenues of around 35% this is a loss to the Exchequer of about £25 billion. This more than wipes out the savings anyway and leaves us £15 billion worse off even without the extra costs above.
Becoming a third country will mean more border checks, customs infrastructure and staff to control immigration and imports from the EU. This again will be a permanent cost.
Negotiations are already getting difficult even acrimonious and they have barely got to first base. Relations with Ireland and other EU countries are significantly worse and will undoubtedly worsen before we're finished. We are alienating the friends we've got now and will need in the future. This cannot be a good thing.
Trade deals with the USA and India will involve a lowering of food and environmental standards as well as more immigration from the sub continent. How this will go down with leavers I don't know but I can guess. It will not be welcomed I'm sure.
Our own public services are bound to get worse as a combination of fewer immigrants for the NHS and care sector plus falling government revenues creates a series of crises that we will stumble through for the next decade and more.
The fabled frictionless trade arrangements we are seeking with the EU will never materialise and trade will be negatively impacted. Jobs will be lost as businesses with complex cross border supply chains leave for genuine frictionless trade inside the internal market. Banks will move staff and operations and that will weaken The City.
In the midst of this the Brexiteers in the Conservative party will continue to deny the reality of Brexit that other people are increasingly aware of. More and more people are now beginning to realise that virtually none of the leave campaign's claims have come true or are ever likely to happen in the near future. Even claims that have not yet been proved to be total fantasies are disappearing into the far distance. How long will it be before the great majority of the British people come to see Brexit for what it is?
I forecast that sooner or later the Brexiteers will look like an ever dwindling band of irrelevant far right nutters.
