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Prepare For A No Deal Brexit

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That simple deal seems not so simple after all. The oven-ready deal turns out to be a figment of the imagination. The mood is pessimistic. The ports are clogged already. Holidays abroad are currently a distant dream.

My preparations involve stocking up the larder, (70% of our food comes from the EU), keeping my car well maintained (a new one is likely to be more costly), plan for staycations for the next few years and abandon all hope of buying music as a physical product.

Better get busy. We’ve got three weeks.

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Comments

  1. I’m trying to recall 1976 and act accordingly.
    Problem is I was 6 and didn’t really understand much apart from Matcbox toy cars, the encyclopedia of British football, and fish fingers.
    Doomsday scenario? Probably.

    • It may not be that bad if you’re already reasonably comfortable, though it won’t be good, and it’s the worst outcome out of Brexit which never had any positive possibilities. If you’re poor or/and disadvantaged though then don’t expect any ‘levelling up’, to use a favourite Tory expression, in your lifetime.

    • Republicans and Putin in charge!
      Killer robots roam the earth! *
      Garbage piling in the streets!
      Broadband back to dialup speed!
      Mobiles all bricked!

      .
      *https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Variety

  6. I was talking to my aunt in the UK last night and she was telling me that her best friends son in law is actually a (high up) civil servant working on the no deal plans – his advice to her being to stock up on essentials………

    Having said that, I just saw that good old Liz Truss has signed a trade deal with us here in Singapore, so you will be able to benefit from our vast natural resources,,….. er…..

  7. Personally I cannot fucking wait for the whole thing to come crashing down. The only problem with that though is that it’s inevitable that those that do the cleaning up are not those that made the mess in the first place.

  8. No really, it’s all fine. Boris Johnson has a clear gasp of the seriousness and importance of this: “It was put to me that this was kind of a bit like twins, and the UK is one twin the EU is another, and if the EU decides to have a haircut then the UK is going to have a haircut or else face punishment. Or if the EU decides to buy an expensive handbag then the UK has to buy an expensive handbag too or else face tariffs. Clearly that is not the sensible way to proceed’’

  9. @Tiggerlion no idea why you would abandon the idea of buying physical music post Brexit.
    My employment in freight includes importing physical product from Germany. This will continue after Brexit – I have already quoted the figures for a continuation in January.
    The biggest problem is Asian imports which are in a terrible mess – largely due to China emerging from the pandemic before everyone else there is a severe imbalance of cntrs in Europe and no empties in China as a result. Consequently a 40′ cmr out of say Shanghai that would have cost $2500 in freight as recently as July is now circa $10,000 and predicted to stay at that level until post Chinese New Year in March. Inflation will possibly take hold meaning higher interest rates and the inability of developed nations to pay off their Covid debts. Brexit will seem like a walk in the park in comparison. Expect unemployment to be harsher than current predictions.

    • Most of my CDs come fromhe Europe. Prices are already high.

      Sooo, we have triple whammy on our economy: Covid, Brexit & Asia. Let’s enjoy this Christmas, it might be the last one we can afford. Er…

      • I got an email from amazon.co.uk the other day, saying that prices for goods sent to Spain will rise on January 1st, because of VAT, customs and local taxes being applied. In the case of returns, amazon will not be liable for these fees. In the good old days, amazon uk used to offer free shipping to Spain on orders over £25. Now it’s about 4 quid a CD. These days I buy most of my CDs from European sellers on Discogs, or the artist’s website.

          • I use Amazon for product information but often find that they are not the cheapest, even when taking delivery costs into account. I bought two different pairs of ear buds this week, one from Richer Sounds, the other from an independent. Both were cheaper than Amazon, even after postage.

          • Do you remember the early days of amazon in the late 90s, when its focus was purely books and music, and you could get thirty second samples of each track (that needed decent internet speed to work). It was thrilling to have access to so much information and – for a short time – it felt like the best music and literature shop in the world.

          • My last HMV online order was not disptached due to “a technical issue in the warehouse”. Two emails to Customer Services went unanswered, a FB message took a week to reply with “please email Customer Services”. Oddly enough, a threat to reclaim my money and problem solved! I’m not keen on ordering online again, and hope Fopp is still open by the time I get vaccinated.

            In the mean time, my local, “the only record shop in the village” has started a home delivery service. Not cheapest, but I’d rather have four records in my hand than five stuck in a warehouse.

          • Can recommend Resident – A little higher in price but friendly staff and good to support an Indie. Have bought loads of stuff from them since lockdown 1.

  10. I’m so weary of it all. The constant lying and half truths. The servile, braying media lapping up the drama of King Boris, promulgating his lies. The UK doesn’t feel like a serious country any more. Paranoid and exceptionalist, ignorant and proud, devoid of sweet reason. These are not the foundation stones on which to prosper mightily. Good luck to those who never wanted anything to do with this shitshow. For the rest, it’s what you voted for. Goodnight UK. I’m glad I got out when I did.

  11. I almost hope there’s no deal, but only because it would lay bare the total failure of Johnson and the whole Conservative government for the past 5+ years, with no escape route… except to start negotiations again on January 2nd, because it’s ridiculous to not have a trading agreement with our nearest & biggest partner, though of course we’d then be in a far worse negotiating position… which was always going to be the case.

    And that is why I’m pretty sure there will be a deal – it will certainly be thin gruel for the UK, but will be presented and hailed as a victory of statecraft on Johnson’s part by the right-wing media, and unfortunately even the more skeptical will be inclined to put a positive “well at least it’s not no deal” spin on it…

    The worst thing for me is that every single element of this was not only predictable, but actually predicted. That “we” could have possibly used up 4 and a half years getting somewhere we could have gotten to 6 months after the Brexit vote is the most abject nonsense, and whatever the opposite of “brinksmanship” would be…

  12. Three weeks until we go off the cliff, three weeks and one day until it becomes official Government policy to say this would all have gone smoothly if it hadn’t been for Covid, and approximately three months before Johnson leaves by mutual agreement and toddles off whistling to himself, taking with him all the blame.

    Actually Covid will help the transition because after the Christmas break we’ll be in severe lockdown again, which will keep the rioters off the street, or at least give an excuse to suppress them. For most of us, the food availability and price issues won’t really hurt – you can cope without avocados for the next six months, can’t you? – but as Gatz says, if you were already poor or vulnerable going into this you will suffer on behalf of the rest of us.

    • I was told, second hand, yesterday that the plan is to lockdown from 28th December to 28th January which makes planning anything difficult as no one knows what restrictions will be applied. When the last one was announced, the blanket application of the tier system caught a lot of people out and government hadn’t thought out how they would be applied to hospitality. Scotch egg anyone?

      • That confirms what I’ve always thought. The timing of lockdown is little to do with the science.

        We came out of the last one too early. There were 13,000 new cases that day, an enormous number. Now there are 21,000. There is no question that London should be in tier 3 immediately. They’ll dilly and dally until the MPs have finished their shopping while Manchester goes bust.

        Wave three has already started. January is going to be an awful month.

  13. If someone can post it, the photograph of David Frost and Boris Johnson in Brussels earlier this week sums up Britain in the 21st Century … privileged, sloppy, arrogant, juvenile, out of touch.

    The two of them look like they’ve just run out of the Common Room after planting a stink bomb.
    Their E.U. hosts look like they are about to conduct very important business negotiations that will have important consequences for many people over many years to come.

    The really sad thing is that the Prime Minister of this country in 2045 is right now trashing a restaurant in Oxford with his old Etonian chums.

  14. “It was Johnson’s arrogance that destroyed hopes last night. Despite a belief on the EU side that Mr Johnson had come to make peace he went into the pre-dinner á deux meeting with all guns blazing, urging VDL to sideline M Barnier. He claimed that he was unimaginative and that after years of blocking reasonable British requests he was an obstacle to a deal. He also made an embarrassing crack about Barnier being French and both the British and the Germans knowing how difficult they could be. VDL made it clear to BJ that Barnier’s mandate from the EU was solid. She asked if he had any fresh proposals. He did not. After that the dinner was an exercise in studied politeness but Johnson did not appear to notice the offence he had caused and continued to make facetious comments”

  15. 5 years ago I could have claimed to be a slightly disinterested Eurosceptic. It wasn’t perfect let’s be honest. I was bored then with the infighting and it wasn’t really an issue that bothered me either way. My bad. Be engaged Dave…. 5 years on I can see that we are so closely linked that coming out is a big mistake for all the reasons stated above and more. Johnson in charge just exacerbates the problem. In the short term we are screwed, i see that. We are where we are. So what happens next? Is this the time, post Brexit, post Covid for someone to come forward to really make a change. Is there the will outside of Twitter and The Afterword to understand how we got here and learn from the mistakes that allowed Farage and Johnson to bully and cajole and lie their way to this point? Let’s be honest there’s no one within the Tory party, Starmer? The Lib Dems are a busted flush. Then there’s the Greens who got my vote last time. In 4 years there will hopefully be a load of disillusioned young voters who surely now will shun the major parties in favour of change. I just hope the Greens or someone is able to get their house in order to use the inevitable pain that’s coming to at least disrupt the old guard in the way UKIP did for all the wrong reasons. Our hope is that surely no one under 25 is ever going to vote Tory again. The required change will come long after we’re all gone but if 2020 turns out to be the year when things began to change for the better history might look back on it more kindly than we view it now. Or not….

    • It would be great if leaving turns out to be a good thing. I’m not averse to being proven wrong but I fear that we would suffer a lot less pain if we’d gone for evolution rather than revolution.

  16. Not long to wait now for Boris’s Brexit backers to cash in on a no deal!

    This was published over a year ago. It would be interesting if the various hedge funds still hold these positions.

    “From the financial data publicly available, Byline Times can reveal that currently £4,563,350,000 (£4.6 billion) of aggregate short positions on a ‘no deal’ Brexit have been taken out by hedge funds that directly or indirectly bankrolled Boris Johnson’s leadership campaign.

    “Most of these firms also donated to Vote Leave and took out short positions on the EU Referendum result. The ones which didn’t typically didn’t exist at that time but are invariably connected via directorships to companies that did.

    “Another £3,711,000,000 (£3.7 billion) of these short positions have been taken out by firms that donated to the Vote Leave campaign, but did not donate directly to the Johnson leadership campaign.”

    https://bylinetimes.com/2019/09/11/brexit-disaster-capitalism-8-billion-bet-on-no-deal-crash-out-by-boris-johnsons-leave-backers/

    Several Brexit backers have, of course, taken the intervening time to take their leave of this sceptred isle – and, in Jim Ratcliffe’s case, move himself to Monaco and his “new Land Rover” plant to France. Others have taken the opportunity to opine on the bright post-Brexit future from their long-established homes in tax havens.

    https://bylinetimes.com/2020/12/09/brexiters-fled-britain/

    Apparently, Private Equity companies both here and in the US are sitting on their hands waiting to see how the dust settles. A collapse in the pound against a backdrop of falling asset prices might yield some bargains to “invest” in – ie load with debt, asset strip and pay themselves handsomely – but buying companies that will struggle to trade internationally might be a non-starter. Besides, they’ve already shafted most of the high street so not much to pick up there.

    Those utility companies not already in foreign hands might also become attractive targets. Meanwhile, while the “disaster capitalists” cash in in the short term, the beneficiaries of the Tories’ “privatised” response to the Covid crisis can only benefit by further embedding themselves into the NHS and the state more widely.

    As the saying goes – “follow the money”!

    Having said all that I do wonder whether some kind of deal might still happen…

    • These should put your mind at rest (Luke Bailey is News Editor of The I)

      https://fullfact.org/economy/short-positions/

      • God people really do just believe whatever they want to believe.

        You could go on Facebook or Twitter right now and post some photoshopped pic or some bullshit graph or some megabullshit “sources close to” / “I know a man” stuff, and thousands of people will share the hell out of it just cos it’s on the “right” side of the culture war. And remainers are at least as guilty as (if not more than) brexiters. You’d think people would’ve learned but no

        • It’s called clutching at straws. It’s what happens to people when they’ve been lied to consistently and continuously for decades by the same coterie of over-privileged, under-performing talentless wankers.

  17. Hoping for some sort of last minute constructive deal.
    My minimal understanding of these things says most EU nations want to continue to trade in and wit the UK, and No Deal is not a good option for them.

    • The difference is that EU nations are looking at one (one.) country to trade with, while the UK is practically cancelling trade deals with (at least) a dozen of their most important export partners.

      And importing goods into the UK from EU countries will still work out fine with a hard brexit from here (prices will “only” rise in the UK). Doing business in the EU would be VERY difficult for UK citizens.

  19. ‘Prepare for a no deal Brexit’. He said, with his head down, eyes apologetic, but with a ‘cor lumme’ smirk on his lips.

    The prick. The immense, monumental, incompetent mendacious prick.

    The scruffy, hunched, unkempt, untidy disgrace to his position.

    The vile opportunistic selfish etc etc

  20. I’m quite looking forward to the re-instatement of the Imperial system, survey, ricketts, and tobacco no longer being considered harmful.
    We’ve never had it so good …

    • He’s good value but not totally objective. I mean, I’m a People’s Vote marcher so I bow to no man in my contempt for the charlatans and dimwits that wanted this, but there’s a sneerocracy I find almost as unpleasant on the remain side. I wish we hadn’t left. But I don’t think we’ll be eating stale crusts by mid January if it’s no deal. It’s tough being a liberal.

      • Righteous anger does not = sneering. To be fair, I don’t think he’s actually saying we will be. He’s merely highlighting the massive bureaucratic overload Brexit has foisted on us that will *inevitably* lead to shortages and price rises. Essential stuff like meds will be flown in anyway. The point about European trucks simply not bothering because it will be too much hassle to get back across the Channel again hadn’t occurred to me.

        • Physical music product. Welcome to my world. Expensive in shops here and if I order from overseas costs at least as much as item itself and takes weeks to arrive. Cue HP …, Eel Market.

  22. “No amount of cajolery, and no attempts at ethical or social seduction, can eradicate from my heart a deep burning hatred for the Tory Party. So far as I am concerned they are lower than vermin.”

    Nye Bevan – Eve of NHS Creation – July 4th 1948

    It seems to me that not much has essentially changed in any regard since then to invalidate his stated opinion.

  24. Not having lived in the U.K. for thirty years, and not having wanted to live there for maybe twenty years before that, and probably – if all goes well or slightly worse – never having to return, the picture I now get of the U.K. is a Hogarth satirical etching: a broken iron-clad, belching smoke, slipping away from Europe under heavy black clouds, packed tight with passengers squabbling for deckchair rights. Lifeboats hang off davits, brawls break out, a tattered Union Flag at half mast. Preening hipsters take selfies as the deck splits. Up on the bridge, the captain holds a bent telescope to his ear – “I see no ships!” On a high spar, a couple perch with a Thermos, impassively watching the chaos below. One of them wears a Keep Calm And Carry On t-shirt, the other studies the sleeve notes on a vinyl album. “Fun while it lasted,” he says.

  26. Why not just end negotiations now, walk away and have the weekend off.
    That’ll show them we’re not to be messed with.
    Pick it all up in January when the EU will be crying out for our return to the Union

    • To be fair, I am convinced that from day one, Boris’s core of supporters, advisors and influencers have had about as much appetite for working out a genuine deal with the EU as I do for ripping out my eyeballs and barbecuing them on a hot grill. This pantomime of seeking a mutually beneficial trading relationship is just cynical posturing.

    • Was there ever an intelligent argument for Brexit? Or Trump? These things have nothing to do with rational debate. They’re great boil-bursts of ignorant twattishness. Ignorant twats have as much right to vote as the intelligent and rational, unfortunately.

        • At least those Etonians are properly Posh people, with loads of money.
          Yer modern 21st century ignorant twat voter is picky about who they allow to sneer at them.
          No Islington smartarse Liberal sneering for them!

    • So we’ve still got gunboats to send then? Hurrah, the sky is black with brass hats!

      On the subject of British exceptionalism, I’m reading (well, listening to) Britain Alone by Philip Stephens, which traces our tragic delusion from Suez to Brexit that we are a great power that actually matters in the greater world scheme of things. A brilliant book, highly recommend.

    • The cod wars are back. I thought it was the 50s they wanted to recreate not the 70s. Cod wars? Is that war over cod or wars that are inauthentic, or ersatz? Proper, genuine wars are so much better.

      • The big question on everyone’s lips is whether Moose will be getting his call up and doing his bit for Queen and Country in Cod Wars 2.0.

        Doubt I’ll be going to Victoria Docks to wave him off. But will be buying tomorrow’s Daily Fail for the free saber for rattling at any errant Frenchmen who foolishly pass this way.

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