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What will Britain look like in 2019 after leaving the EU ?
monalia
Posts: 42 Forumite
Fast forward to 2015.
Despite a further loss in Foreign Direct Investment and manufacturing jobs, the British economy has risen out of the third dip helped by growth in the financial sector.
A successful anti-EU campaign has allowed the Conservative party to keep UKIP in check and enough Tories pass the electoral post first to reach an absolute majority in the Lower Chamber. David Cameron is re-elected as Prime Minister and installs a cross party Commission to re-negotiate the UK’s engagement with Europe jointly headed by Kenneth Clarke and Peter Mandelson. The negotiations finish in late 2017, resulting in the EU allowing Britain to increase university tuition fees further and to join the Schengen Agreement with Switzerland and Norway. In return Britain is asked to give up the British rebate. The British public is losing its calm and the calls for an ‘out-referendum’ grow.
May 2018 - the EU referendum results come through and the majority of the British population are celebrating the outcome: Britain says ‘adios’ to the European Union. While the Londoners toast with Champagne (from £25 a bottle upwards), the North of the Country raises a glass of Spanish or Italian bubbly from Aldi or Lidl (at about £6 per bottle) as the economic divide increases. British-EU talks on how to deal with their mutual citizens now living on the wrong side of the channel are scheduled to start after the summer recess. In spring 2018 most Brits are in celebratory mode and still unaware how their lives are going to change.
Among the many British industries lobbying London for protection from cheaper European competition are British sparkling wine producers (many of them owned by French investors). Amid the stark reverse in support after the EU-renegotiation fiasco the government can’t resist the lobbying, linked to rural communities in the Conservative’s southern heartlands and decides that only Sparkling Wines produced to a newly defined ‘British Method’ can be imported, banning all other sparkling wine. Some other industries achieve similar deals with new laws coming in quickly before the summer recess 2018. With increased producer protection inflation starts to increase quickly.
With rising living costs and an increase in unemployment the calls for ‘British jobs for British people’ are getting louder. The British government decides to crack down on EU plumbers, cleaners, doctors, engineers, mathematicians, ... and in another populist move quickly sends them back to where they came from. In response Spain expulses all British citizens who are not paying income tax in Spain, demolishing their homes as a judge in Madrid decides that the building permits of all British owned homes were invalid. France is also furious and demands that in return for the expulsion of its bankers from London British citizens will have to apply for visas to visit the Schengen area. Germany and Austria highlight the damage this will cause the tourism industry, but in return for the French commitment to propose a German as the next president of the European Central Bank the German government gives in to French demands.
Freed from Brussels Britain also says ‘auf Wiedersehen’ to the working time directive and all EU labour laws. With an acute shortage of medical staff doctors and nurses are now expected to work 80 hours weeks in return for a 16% pay rise. The medical profession appeal to the European Court of Human Rights, and only after the Daily Mail’s huge outrage about lazy doctors the British public start to understand that Britain has not resigned to the ECHR as it not an EU institution.
In 2019 the British recession is deepening, but inflation is falling back to 25%, helped by a stark drop in house prices as Britain expelled far more EU nationals than the EU was returning British nationals. But the sudden oversupply of houses causes huge drop in house prices and subsequently a run on British banks. Under pressure, the government bails out all but two banks at a cost 20 times larger than the cost of a similar bailout in Iceland in 2008.
With Britain now outside the EU UKIP is no longer registering candidates for the 2019 elections. Viktoria Mehr Farage, the young daughter of a former demagogue and his German wife, starts a new group called UKEU, calling for Britain to rejoin the EU, to sign the Schengen agreement to encourage tourism and to join the Euro to protect British banks and shelter Britain against inflation, which started to spiral out of control once house prices had bottomed out earlier that year at the price levels of 1982.
Despite spiraling public debt, persistently high inflation and the deepest recession in over three generations the Conservative party returns victorious from the 2019 elections, as the pro-European vote had been split between Labour, LibDems and young Viktoria Mehr Farage’s new UKEU party.
Accepting defeat Nick Clegg states: “Britain has been through a series of events so difficult that you couldn’t make them up.” Clegg decides to retire from active politics and takes up a position at the United Nations in Geneva.
Despite a further loss in Foreign Direct Investment and manufacturing jobs, the British economy has risen out of the third dip helped by growth in the financial sector.
A successful anti-EU campaign has allowed the Conservative party to keep UKIP in check and enough Tories pass the electoral post first to reach an absolute majority in the Lower Chamber. David Cameron is re-elected as Prime Minister and installs a cross party Commission to re-negotiate the UK’s engagement with Europe jointly headed by Kenneth Clarke and Peter Mandelson. The negotiations finish in late 2017, resulting in the EU allowing Britain to increase university tuition fees further and to join the Schengen Agreement with Switzerland and Norway. In return Britain is asked to give up the British rebate. The British public is losing its calm and the calls for an ‘out-referendum’ grow.
May 2018 - the EU referendum results come through and the majority of the British population are celebrating the outcome: Britain says ‘adios’ to the European Union. While the Londoners toast with Champagne (from £25 a bottle upwards), the North of the Country raises a glass of Spanish or Italian bubbly from Aldi or Lidl (at about £6 per bottle) as the economic divide increases. British-EU talks on how to deal with their mutual citizens now living on the wrong side of the channel are scheduled to start after the summer recess. In spring 2018 most Brits are in celebratory mode and still unaware how their lives are going to change.
Among the many British industries lobbying London for protection from cheaper European competition are British sparkling wine producers (many of them owned by French investors). Amid the stark reverse in support after the EU-renegotiation fiasco the government can’t resist the lobbying, linked to rural communities in the Conservative’s southern heartlands and decides that only Sparkling Wines produced to a newly defined ‘British Method’ can be imported, banning all other sparkling wine. Some other industries achieve similar deals with new laws coming in quickly before the summer recess 2018. With increased producer protection inflation starts to increase quickly.
With rising living costs and an increase in unemployment the calls for ‘British jobs for British people’ are getting louder. The British government decides to crack down on EU plumbers, cleaners, doctors, engineers, mathematicians, ... and in another populist move quickly sends them back to where they came from. In response Spain expulses all British citizens who are not paying income tax in Spain, demolishing their homes as a judge in Madrid decides that the building permits of all British owned homes were invalid. France is also furious and demands that in return for the expulsion of its bankers from London British citizens will have to apply for visas to visit the Schengen area. Germany and Austria highlight the damage this will cause the tourism industry, but in return for the French commitment to propose a German as the next president of the European Central Bank the German government gives in to French demands.
Freed from Brussels Britain also says ‘auf Wiedersehen’ to the working time directive and all EU labour laws. With an acute shortage of medical staff doctors and nurses are now expected to work 80 hours weeks in return for a 16% pay rise. The medical profession appeal to the European Court of Human Rights, and only after the Daily Mail’s huge outrage about lazy doctors the British public start to understand that Britain has not resigned to the ECHR as it not an EU institution.
In 2019 the British recession is deepening, but inflation is falling back to 25%, helped by a stark drop in house prices as Britain expelled far more EU nationals than the EU was returning British nationals. But the sudden oversupply of houses causes huge drop in house prices and subsequently a run on British banks. Under pressure, the government bails out all but two banks at a cost 20 times larger than the cost of a similar bailout in Iceland in 2008.
With Britain now outside the EU UKIP is no longer registering candidates for the 2019 elections. Viktoria Mehr Farage, the young daughter of a former demagogue and his German wife, starts a new group called UKEU, calling for Britain to rejoin the EU, to sign the Schengen agreement to encourage tourism and to join the Euro to protect British banks and shelter Britain against inflation, which started to spiral out of control once house prices had bottomed out earlier that year at the price levels of 1982.
Despite spiraling public debt, persistently high inflation and the deepest recession in over three generations the Conservative party returns victorious from the 2019 elections, as the pro-European vote had been split between Labour, LibDems and young Viktoria Mehr Farage’s new UKEU party.
Accepting defeat Nick Clegg states: “Britain has been through a series of events so difficult that you couldn’t make them up.” Clegg decides to retire from active politics and takes up a position at the United Nations in Geneva.
0
Comments
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Good story with a twist.0
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Clegg has vested interests in the EU, and wasn't he once an MEP?0
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The UK has a long tradition of free trade there is no reason to see this being reversed.
It is the EU that has created huge tariff barriers, created food mountains, caused a great deal of poverty in the third world by taxes on their food imports and caused shocking environmental damage.
The UK will now be free to create low tariff barriers with the rest of the world.
Spain will introduce huge incentives for UK people to come buy homes there and to go there on holiday in the face of 50-60 % unemployment.
Germany will slash prices of its products as it entered the fifth consecutive year of recession with special get two for one BMW offers.
The UK housing market will enter a golden age of affordable high quality homes that even young people can afford.
The Uk balance of payments will be positive for the first time since the war.
The reduction in unemployment and growth in export means the budget deficit is history and the national debt is falling rapidly.0 -
Plenty of succesful nations trade with Europe, no problem and more of them are also now about to sign trade deals anyway.
Do not fall for the Chicken Licken gloom.
When debating the Euro, the pro's used all the same trite lines about investment.0 -
zoominatorone wrote: »Clegg has vested interests in the EU, and wasn't he once an MEP?
And as astute observers are aware, EU grandees have a conditional clause in their generous pension arrangements which enables it to be removed should they act against the EU's interests.
Don't they, Messrs Clegg, Mandelson, Kinnock, Brittan? et al0 -
And as astute observers are aware, EU grandees have a conditional clause in their generous pension arrangements which enables it to be removed should they act against the EU's interests.
Don't they, Messrs Clegg, Mandelson, Kinnock, Brittan? et al
Perhaps after Clegg loses his seat in 2015 they should make him EU Commissioner with special responsibility for managing the renegotiation with the UK. Then he would have to decide whether or not to concede enough ground to keep us in, or to tow the official EU Commission line and play hard ball thus driving us out.
In reality of course the big boys and girls would never leave anything so important to a pillock like him. He's odds on to get some sort of lucrative sinecure though.No-one would remember the Good Samaritan if he'd only had good intentions. He had money as well.
The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money.
Margaret Thatcher0 -
The UK has a long tradition of free trade there is no reason to see this being reversed.
When was that, Clapton? I have a different interpretation: British trade has been based on exploiting exclusive trading rights with British colonies. The colonies had to trade their resources exclusively with Britain and Britain would than trade those resources with other countries. The terms of this trade were very profitable for Britain and made the country a very wealthy global power. It lasted until the Americans forced its former master to give up its exclusive trading rights with its colonies in exchange for a helping hand during the war.
In the decades after the war and until PM Thatcher took the UK into the Common Market the country was known for inefficiencies, trade barriers, currency restrictions etc.
Conclusion: Britain has never had a tradition of free trade, quite the opposite!0 -
The scare stories about what it would be like outside the EU remind me of the scare stories about letting banks go bust.
That's all they are ... scare stories promoted by lying politicians and their thieving masters.0 -
When was that, Clapton? I have a different interpretation: British trade has been based on exploiting exclusive trading rights with British colonies. The colonies had to trade their resources exclusively with Britain and Britain would than trade those resources with other countries. The terms of this trade were very profitable for Britain and made the country a very wealthy global power. It lasted until the Americans forced its former master to give up its exclusive trading rights with its colonies in exchange for a helping hand during the war.
In the decades after the war and until PM Thatcher took the UK into the Common Market the country was known for inefficiencies, trade barriers, currency restrictions etc.
Conclusion: Britain has never had a tradition of free trade, quite the opposite!
Not even one out of ten for historical accuracy there - a level of ignorance elevated to hilarity when we read that Mrs Thatcher 'took the UK into the Common Market...'
She did, did she?0 -
Of course Britain joined before her, nevertheless the free movement of goods went full scale in her time.0
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