Before 2016, how many of you reading this had been drastically affected by decisions made by the European Union?

Not many I bet and the truth is, most of us have probably benefitted from it in some small way (food standards, cleaner beaches etc) but not really noticed it to any degree.

When I voted last year, to be honest, I did it on the basis that in the month leading up to it, there was nothing I could find that warranted making such a big decision to leave.

Like many people, I didn’t even want to be put in that position by an elected government. My assumption is that we vote MP’s in to make big decisions and vote them out if they make a hash of them.

The elected PM at the time (David Cameron) didn’t think leaving the EU was clever, so that should have been the end of it, at least for 5 years.

Since the vote to exit, I have spent too much of my time trying to understand the implications of it, often drifting into highly confusing articles about tarrifs, special deals and border controls by new super computers that will cost millions and never work.

Successive governments of all colours have attempted to install computers that don’t work in the tax office, hospitals and the benefit system.

They cost 100’s of millions and when they don’t work the IT company is sacked and replaced by another company that says the system that has been built so badly, they will have to build a new one by recruiting expert engineers who are are not really experts at all but it says they are on their LinkedIn CV.

No one likes wasting taxpayers money like the government does.

Anyway, this was meant to be a brief blog about the ‘No Deal’ Brexit that appears to be on the agenda and according to the government “will cost whatever it takes”.

Now, when people were getting all excited by the red bus that was to be the saviour of the NHS, they were not told about the £26 billion that was to be put to one side to lessen the Brexit impact…a war chest is what they called it.

Last week the Financial Times reported that £18 billion of that money had effectively gone because of optimistic growth forecasts by the chancellor.

Now there are reports that the whole ‘no deal’ scenario could cost the British economy £400 billion. Even if this is a worst case scenario, it is surely better not to have such a possible scenario in the first place?

These are mind boggling figures that could wipe one fifth off the British economy and for what? Because Frank down at the local doesn’t like the Polish bird who works in Costa?

One of the best independent reports I have read (the government won’t let us see their one for some reason) came from the CBI and was sent to me by a friend of mine. I can’t promise that it won’t get confusing but if you read it, you will soon see that ‘No Deal’ will create the most complex attempts at trading agreements in the history of modern finance.

The only good news is for domestic producers of things like English wine and tomatoes. Such will be the hike in imported food and drink costs, it will become pretty prohibitive; for example, a bottle of Rioja costing £8:00 could easily become £12:00.

Anyway, give this article go, it is far more dramatic than Dr Foster, and its about what real life may well be like in the next decade.

Well I think it is…maybe I will wake up and realise it is all a terrible nightmare.

http://www.cbi.org.uk/global-future/case_study06_wto.html