What next?

Many countries have trade agreements with the EU and other of their major trade partners, but we will be going out under WTO rules with no bipartite agreements, so where ever we trade we will be at a disadvantage compared with our main competitors, who will have such agreements.

Because we will be desperate to reach agreements we will be the suppliant in all these agreements and be grateful for anything the other country chooses to give us and make deep concessions ourselves.

No country in the world operates under WTO exclusively, lots of countries want to be in the EU.

Quiz

I feel so sorry for the majority of countries of the world who operate under WTO terms. Poor, poor down trodden citizens who would probably give an arm and a leg to be ruled by the EU empire if they had the choice. However do they sleep at night worrying about the future for their country. Oh, I've just found out they don't!

The Mumsnet forecast is the most optimistic I have scene. I just wish i could believe it.

I try not to think about the future because whenever I do all I can see is complete political collapse and the country becoming ungovernable, like that east African country (Somalia?) that had no controlling government for nearly 10 years.

In any upcoming election there will be four, possibly 5 big players: Conservatives, Labour, Brexit, Lib Dems and, possible, the Greens. With the usual political allegiances in disarray and 5 parties fighting for every seat we will see MPs consistently coming to the top of the poll with less than 30 % of the poll. because voters will be split, some betweenConservative/Brexit, Lib Dems/Greens, we may well see ludicrous results such as solid Labour seats ending up with Conservative MPs and true blue tory constituencies with Labour MPs, plus a good sprinkling of independents. No single party will even be in a position to begin to suggest they lead a government and after the the disastrous experience of the Lib Dems in coalition, no party will choose to be a colaition partner. It will be the kind of non-agreement the DUP offered of nothing.

The country will be ungovernable because it will be impossible to form a government. Further elections will only muddy the pool further.

The only consolation is that with almost all MPs and ministers will be under retirement age as will most of the electorate, they will not be able to blame the older generation for the nice mess they have got themselves into. Except of course they will.

Sorry to disappoint, we are the type that can be having breakfast on a Sunday, decide we want to go away -trip to travel agent on Monday - following Sunday breakfast we can be anywhere we fancy!!

No point doing to much "forward planning" at our age!!!!

Nor can I see the point of continually going through "what if/about" scenarios that most of us have absolutely no control/say in.

We all have/had a "say" at the ballot box

GG13 So you live entirely in the present, have no thought for the future. Do you book holidays, dental or medical appointments plan menus? because all are based on you making assumptions about what would or could happen in the future to make these events possible. If you book a dental appoimtment you are making a decision that the dentist will be there on the day of the appointment, no emergency will have called him away, that he/she will not be ill on the day, that nothing will arise in your life for you to have to cancel the appointment.

All that is happening with this thread is that we are looking at the likely overnemnt scenario in this country over the next six months. We need to look ahead and consider what the political scene will be before we start planning our lives, from holidays, to Christmas to dental appointments.

Maybe if we could have imagined the mess we are in now, we might not have got into it.

Potentially, an unelected (generally), gaff-prone, Trumpesque person whose own side have to keep him away from the limelight, could be crowned unopposed as PM, having been the worst Foreign Secretary we've ever had; forces through a No Deal Brexit on the premise of "only really meaning it as a threat to make the EU grant concessions".... but, oops, so we'll just have to revive that old wartime spirit with powdered eggs and fuel rationing.

Jobs lost, supply chains disrupted, riots, trouble in Ireland, trouble at ports, widespread bribery and smuggling and Britain losing the last vestiges of international and political respect.

Sadly, not so impossible as it would have seemed a year ago.

Very good post on Mumsnet and thanks for sharing it Varian.

Or ‘how can I spook myself just that bit more?’
By imagining silly scenarios.
Jeez.

The scenario envisaged by Oakenbeach on Mumsnet starts:_

"Boris becomes PM. He spends the next couple of months in fruitless attempts and new “initiatives to get concessions from the EU. The EU won’t budge. The Tories, like the Germans in WWII won’t admit, even to themselves, that the day of reckoning is fast approaching.... until eventually, in late September or early October, reality can’t be suspended any longer, and number of Tory MPs - probably in numbers that will surprise many - break ranks and indicate they will vote down their Government, judging that the now near certainty of no-deal outweighs the risk of the possibility of a Corbyn-led Government.... A GE is announced, leading to the EU extending its deadline. The Tory remnant - purged of its one-nation wing - form an uneasy electoral alliance with the Brexit Party.".................

....... and, after a series of all too credible developments, it ends:-

Brexit is averted but the UK remains mired in deep, deep crisis.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/eu_referendum_2016_/3607464-Brexit-How-s-it-all-going-to-play-out

Perhaps those who reject this scenario could put forward a better one.

Gonegirl ??

Ooh, I'll go along with that Urmstongran!

Keep smiling everyone.

I dare say whatever the outcome we will be okay. Let’s not worry unless we need to. The government have children and grandchildren too, families whom they love and care for. Yes some have fortunes in off shore bank accounts or pay for accountant’s services who enable them to keep their money.

But as we mature people realise, wealth is not the arbitrator of all good things. There will always be the ‘haves’ and ‘have littles’ (I’m more one of the latter - no one has ever given me one my husband a penny - no inheritance, severely delayed state pension for me) yet I’m a glass half full, sunny type of person. I’m grateful for what we have, we are fortunate and I absolutely refuse to become worn down by the gloom merchants of Brexit.

Life is for living with our friends and families. Dump the rage and the pessimism and try to be calmer and more hopeful for the future. I’m sure our government won’t put us in harm’s way and eventually this impasse will .... pass!
?

Do those who voted remain have a crystal ball and can correctly predict what is going to happen to/in the EU in the coming years?

Are you being deliberately obtuse, GG13? How do you have the absolute nerve to tell us that we haven't got crystal balls and we don't know what is going to happen next, when you voted for the Leave campaign's crystal ball?

It was all going to be so easy, wasn't it?

The trouble with the type of hung parliaments we are producing at the moment is that they are not representative

Andrew Rawnsley proposes a number of different possible future scenarios and warns that our archaic first-past-the-post system is alarmingly unfit for a multi-party age. Britain ruled by wildly unrepresentative governments is one scary version of our future

"Britain has a multi-party politics trapped in the decrepit body of first past the post. The new politics is trying to express itself through an archaic electoral system designed to work with only two contenders. The full consequences of this are not entirely knowable, but we can hazard a guess that it is going to amplify unpredictability and may contain some scary implications for our democracy.

One potential outcome is that neither the Tories nor Labour will be able to secure a Commons majority for the foreseeable future. A lot of Britons say they do not like hung parliaments, but they created one in 2010 and again in 2017 and they will have to learn to live with hung parliaments if they keep on doing this. In the event that this is the future, we will face years of paralysis under feeble governments unable to do a great deal unless the British political class becomes much more skilled at building alliances across party lines and much more willing to work towards consensus.

There is another, and more alarming, version of the future. This is that an electoral system incompatible with multi-party politics produces governments that are wildly unrepresentative of what the nation voted for. When you feed multi-party politics through a first-past-the-post system you can end up with some extremely unappetising results."

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jun/09/our-archaic-first-past-post-system-alarmingly-unfit-multi-party-age

Urmstongran ????

Armageddon?

A land of milk and honey?

Or somewhere in between - where the sun will still shine, the grass will still grow and we will be fine?
?

MaizieD do you know what is going to happen next? Do those who voted remain have a crystal ball and can correctly predict what is going to happen to/in the EU in the coming years?

Don’t worry about “my business” it is extremely successful thank you very much.

GG13 nobody knows anything - and yet, staunch Leavers will keep saying 'we know exactly what we voted for' - strange isn't it? (well 'strange' is one word for it ...)

Nobody knows what will/might happen.

Do you Leavers live your lives like goldfish, with no idea what is going to happen to you in the next hour (let alone the next 24)? Do you never let your past experiences inform your future plans?

I understand that you run a business, GG13. I am astounded that it is still afloat if that is your philosophy of life..

No wonder we're in the mess we're in... Leavers, with absolutely no clue (by their own admissions) about what is going to happen in the future. Except that they know for absolute certain that the EU is going to become a 'United States of Europe, that it's going to disintegrate (Schrodingers EU ), that their grandchildren are going to be conscripts in an EU army (no doubt bent on world domination) and that the UK will blossom economically when all their industry is destroyed (according to their favourite economist, Minford) and that it will be Top Dog in the world (no, I made that last bit up).

Do they know the meaning of the word 'irony' (without having to look it up)?

Whatiffery rather than whataboutery, perhaps?

Not that it makes any difference here what label we put on it, as far as i can see.

Nobody knows what will/might happen.

Nobody knows how people will/might vote in the next General Election.

Nobody knows when the next General Election will be.

Nobody knows if/when the UK will leave the EU.

So the "thought out discussion" in the link is just a succession of "what about" if this happened/s it could in turn lead to this.

It's not actually 'whataboutery' at all. GG13.

'Whataboutery' is when someone's (or a group's) action is being condemned in discussion and a poster tries to divert the focus, or excuse the action, by saying "But what about x.y,z. behaviour by another group/person"

Discussion of possible future scenarios for the UK, based on past experience, knowledge of how government, the constitution and the political system works, and studying polls for trends, is an interesting exercise and most definitely not 'whataboutery.

Exactly, that is the point. The future is worrying and we can all speculate. The Mumsnet OP has written a carefully thought out possible scenario. It is quite long, which is why I have given the link, rather than copy it, but it is well worth reading.