I won't claim to have considered this last year, and voted remain as the low risk approach. But, we've all been in a meeting where the 'big picture' card gets played to completely trump an entirely rationale position with an entirely ridiculous statement, and are astounded by the audacity of it. Could we be seeing the same played out on a huge scale...?
Look forwards a few years... Europe is already irrelevant to us from a food export perspective. And we import far more from outside the EU. UK retail and food manufacturing supply chains are, on the whole, robust. Shortages are front page headlines today, that's how rare they are. Shifting the 30% that's currently EU to elsewhere is pretty straightforward. The Scottish will be a bit annoyed about whisky, salmon, haggis and shortbread exports, but they want to remain in the EU anyway...
Manufacturing of all types is slowly moving out of the EU. Cars to China, South America, Africa, India. Electronics pretty much all gone, even if much of the IP originates there...or more likely the US... Clothing gone to India , SE Asia, China. So it doesn't matter what barriers the EU puts up. Importing from outside the EU will be easy...why wouldn't they want to sell to us? We'll be a low tariff free trade area. We don't have anough people in the UK to do the work that currently needs doing, so the impact domestically will be low. BMW and MB still want to sell cars; they'll just ship from India or a Africa, where they drive on the left anyway. Admittedly furniture could be a challenge, what with Ikea being Swedish, but they're not in the Euro, so there's hope :p
It does leave the sticky issue of financial services and insurance, but wealth in the EU will decline as economic power moves east so I'm sure our old colonies will welcome us back and there'll be far more money to be made out of the billions of burgeoning middle classes and businesses in China,India and Africa than the Europeans anyway. I mean their legal and financial systems are kind of modelled on ours, so we're well placed to succeed. And the EU was obsessed about dismantling London as a financial centre anyway, much preferring Paris or Frankfurt. So staying in was no guarantee of safety for the sector.
So then what's the EU to us then apart from an easy holiday destination, or, with queues at passport control, not so easy ;)
Note, the above might not be serious...!
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