The shepherd will tend his sheep
The valley will bloom again
And Jimmy will go to sleep
In his own little room again
...so now what? (Check back on this in a year or two to see whether I
was right.)
Well, the Dutch and French racist thug parties have already
called for their own referenda. The EU was already having problems,
and the Great British Public has helpfully greased the slope and
shoved hard. There will be armed conflict within the current EU
borders by 2026, probably 2021. (Most probably Russia taking the
Baltics.)
Scotland will certainly go independent. And its economy will collapse
even more than it would have with the higher subsidy level it would
have got if it had gone in 2014. I predict some level of formal church
participation in government by 2026.
Most of the business of the City of London will move to Frankfurt.
London will become, even more than it is now, the place you go with
business that can't stand the daylight. Expect lots more rich and
dodgy Russians and Arabs buying up property to let it stand empty,
especially with the weaker pound.
The UK will remain in the EEA, and pay about as much to the EU net as
it does now, but without any say in how it's spent. We will have about
the same level of immigration that we did before, possibly slightly
lower.
As a great man once said: "'Stronger.' You see? You see? Your stupid
minds! Stupid! Stupid!"
(Feel free to add your own predictions below.)
- Posted by ZenD at
09:13am on
24 June 2016
I'll add that I reckon the Little Englanders currently living in fantasy lala-land after today's result will still be looking to blame migrants/the EU and so on for the issues they'll be facing. Those issues will largly stem from a combination of the recession we're about to enter into, and the dismantling of the protections the EU afforded us such as various workers' rights. Leaving the EU has, amazingly, not solved our problems.
Not sure about the formal part of the church participation in government though.
Fully expecting Russia to have a go at the Baltics, unless (or perhaps especially because of) its economy slide doesn't turn around, and Germany's current paralysis on the Russian issue will cause further strife.
The rest of the EU will have a pretty tumultuous time of it as well.
- Posted by Michael Cule at
10:49am on
24 June 2016
You are failing to cheer me up, you two. You do know that don't you?
I think the only pleasure I'm likely to have out of politics in the near future is watching what this will do to the Tory party.
- Posted by RogerBW at
11:07am on
24 June 2016
I think that's a category error: to assume that the showy tribal-style conflicts mounted by one part of the political class against another part of the political class are anything other than a deliberate distraction from the fact that the political class itself always retains power.
- Posted by Ashley R Pollard at
03:17pm on
24 June 2016
We are Perfidious Albion.
- Posted by Owen Smith at
04:22pm on
24 June 2016
I agree that the chances of Scottish Independance have gone up markedly. It was only 55% in favour of Remain in the UK last time, this could be enough to swing it provided they can stay in the EU. But what currency to use appears to be a stumbling block.
Northern Ireland is a mess, they voted to stay in the EU. And the Good Friday agreement means all NI citizens can get Irish citizenship I believe. But the polarised positions of the NI parties mean it's unlikely anything will really change.
Personally I think 52% is too narrow a margin to be making this kind of momentous change on. Better weather in London on polling day, a more effective campaign by Labour, an actual informed debate rather than the diatribe of lies and deceit we got from both sides, any number of things could have swung it by a few percent.
I reckon we'll just about have sorted this mess out by the time I'm due to retire, whicn hopefully is in a bit over ten years. Assuming I don't have to work for an extra ten years due to the dire state of the economy aftef this disastrous decision.
Frankly, we're screwed.
- Posted by Owen Smith at
04:26pm on
24 June 2016
Oh, while I agree it's quite likely we'll end up in the EEA that makes the entire vote a farce. It was decided based on Immigration, but the EEA requires you to accept immigration. The only things the EEA gets you out of are the agriculture and fisheries policies, and any influence over the rules you have to abide by. Most Norwegian politicians hate it but know there's no will in the population to fully join the EU.
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