Tuesday 5th July

So, after the momentous decision nearly two weeks ago, we have to look to just what our country will look like in 5 years time.  Firstly it will be incredibly unlikely that Article 50 will not have been invoked by the incoming new Leader and P.M. of the Tories.  I doubt that there will be a General Election until 2020, by which time the terms agreed upon with the EU for our exit will be about to be, or will have just been enacted.

Let’s look on the positive side and assume that we will still have access to the Single Market and that the Economic Uncertainty will be over; the threat of mass redundancies and Recession if we had not even secured this essential market will at least have been averted.

BUT……

We will almost certainly have to accept free movement of people as well.  As there are to be no pre-triggering negotiations and only two years of talks the Europeans will have the Upper Hand, and will insist on this condition.  Also Cameron’s famous brake will not be in place, although of course free from Europe we may be able to restrict Benefit payments to new Migrants; though in reality there were very few of these, far more common were benefits paid to non-EU immigrants, which no-one has ever attempted to control.

So I think we will have an awful lot of unhappy people.  The Scots will most probably be in the process of declaring Independence and applying themselves for entry into the EU.  Northern Ireland may well follow suit, or be in some sort of limbo with an uncertain future with the South.  All those who voted remain (48%) will be unhappy that we are out of Europe and the majority who voted Leave will be unhappy that we still have to accept EU migrants.  Tory M.P.s (at least half of them) will not be able to forgive the Leavers and will be trying to force some sort of re-joining strategy.  Labour could well still be in turmoil with or without Jeremy as leader, as UKIP eats into their traditional vote, and most of them will be unhappy as we face at least another five years of Tory rule. The LibDems will always be unhappy, unless someone can resurrect Charlie Kennedy.

The trouble is that the Leave campaign promise of being able to control Immigration was never realistic.  We recently signed a very limited trade deal with India and had to increase the number of visas for Indian workers wishing to work in the UK as a trade-off.  Even if we manage to negotiate new trade deals with China and other countries we may have to concede on the Immigration front.  The world is changing fast, young people are travelling and choosing to work all over the world, and no amount of Government Legislation will stop that.  Of course, this is the best-case scenario.  We could well not even agree to the single market, in which case unemployment will rocket as companies re-locate to mainland Europe. Of course if that happen then many EU migrants may well go home to or to other more prosperous countries in Europe, so at least some anti-immigrant people will be happy.