No deal only adds to Brexit uncertainty
I was enjoying a holiday in Menorca last week and ignored politics entirely. It was blissful. When I returned and began reading the news, and scrolling through Twitter, a sense of frustration quickly returned.
In 2016 Brexit was portrayed as a buccaneering adventure, a national revival, something to get excited about. Now? It’s just draining. I’m bored of Brexit (“BoB”) and have been for some time. It’s quite something to be bored of an ongoing political crisis as a writer and politics nerd, but there it is. It’s tedious.
I’m not alone in this and the government knows it. Boris and his chief adviser Dominic Cummings are exploiting this sense of frustration to justify leaving the EU deal or no deal on 31st October. Variations of ‘the public just want this done’, ‘the public are sick of hearing about this’ and ‘we need to end the uncertainty’ will be repeated over the next few weeks. This all very true. The trouble is, a no deal Brexit will not bring resolution.
“No deal Brexit” sounds decisive and final but it’s utterly misleading. It’s appealing to Leavers who want a ‘clean break’ and think of it as a defiant UK walking away from the table as the EU attempts to bully us. It appeals to anyone who is fed up because they think it draws a line under it. The problem is that a no deal Brexit will put rocket boosters under the political crisis and intensify the debate. It will not bring certainty for business. Then, sooner or later, the torturous negotiations with the EU will begin again.
It’s difficult to predict how a no deal Brexit will affect an already volatile and unstable political situation but it won’t be smooth sailing. According to pollsters like John Curtice, an immediate election may allow the Tories to unite Leavers against divided remainers, giving them an overall majority. How the negative consequences of a no deal Brexit affect the stability of the government from there is difficult to predict. We can be sure that politics will get even more divisive and the governments opponents will be united in outrage. The Conservatives could even see defections, a threat to any majority gained.
The consensus on the economic consequences of a no deal Brexit is that it will be very bad. Again, no one can be absolutely certain, and the government will attempt to mitigate it. We can safely say that consequences will land somewhere in the range between utterly catastrophic and immediately bad with lasting negative effects before an eventual recovery. No one with any genuine credibility thinks a no deal Brexit will benefit the economy.
After months of anticipating a no deal Brexit, which has led to a fall in business investment, a decline in the value of the pound, an economy in standstill (at best) and major costs for businesses that can afford the necessary planning, then comes the immediate impact. This is likely to be an economic shock that aggravates all of the aforementioned consequences suffered thus far.
Then comes the disruption caused by border checks and delays at ports. This will hit manufacturing hard. Figures out from the automotive industry show that sales are down. Supermarkets Sainsbury’s, Asda and Tesco have warned that an October no-deal exit is “as bad as it gets” and there will be shortages of some foodstuffs, especially fresh food from Southern Europe. Meanwhile, the sudden exit from the single market for services and absence of any new agreements will mean some services companies unable to provide certain services.