I've not tried to wash away any unemployment figures. I and others have stated that in isolation and out of context, they are meaningless. If you can't afford to live, being employed isn't enough. Yet too many people see unemployment figures as the be all and end all. You must know this.
As for project fear, that's the most ridiculous ongoing slogan. It's project reality now. At best, the UK will come out of Brexit diminished. Even its biggest proponents say any benefits might not be felt for 50 years. That means people coming of voting age now would work for their entire lives earning less than they otherwise would have, just so a handful of rich people (some of which are moving their businesses to… the EU) can get richer. In the meantime, the ERG seeks to drive the country off of a cliff and renege on every single promise made prior to the referendum. (The latest zinger from Rees-Moog: a belief EU/EEA citizens should be treated no differently form the second we leave. That'll be fun for the estimated four million people in the UK who are either EU/EFTA/Swiss nationals, or who are married to/in a relationship with one.)
In terms of employment alone, we've already seen EU agencies move out (the most obvious of things that would happen, despite the arguments of idiots like David Davis), and companies are relocating staff. Many businesses simply won't be able to exist. Without the CU/SM, JIT manufacturing is dead. Agriculture will be wrecked if we want a deal with the US or Australia. Services will be bulldozed by our lack of a deal with the EU (and the knock-on effect is the UK then becomes less interesting to other third countries regarding trade.) Investment in the UK has dropped sharply, and no-one is talking about benefits anymore. Brexit more or less went like this:
- Sunlit uplands! No downsides!
- Easiest deal ever with the EU – done in an afternoon
- We never said it was going to be easy
- Always said there would be an adjustment period before the benefits
- Won't be like a Mad Max dystopia
- May not see any benefits for 50 years
- Won't be the end of the world
The last of those is something May quoted recently. That is the lowest possible fucking bar to set for no-deal. Although, arguably, it will be the end of the world for some people, because under a no-deal scenario, people will die. That's not hyperbole. Unless we can guarantee the flow of medicine and food, there are going to be colossal problems in this country. Of course, Brexiters wave such problems away, or lay groundwork for blaming the EU. "Surely, they wouldn't be so CRUEL as to stop insulin medicine coming into the UK?" It's nothing to do with the EU. We've flung up barriers entirely unnecessarily, and this government is so ideological and stubborn that it won't walk back.
I hope that something changes. Either something happens to call this shitstorm off, or the Irish border forces the UK into a semi-permanent transition state within the CU and SM, and that holds until such a point that enough old people die to get us back into the EU. The first of those I think is vanishingly unlikely. (Sorry, second referendum fans, but that just isn't going to happen.) The second is reasonably possible, albeit under massive spin. The third I suspect is very likely, albeit not in the timescales pro-EU people hope. (I'm in my early 40s. I don't imagine the UK will be in the UK again before I hit retirement age, and possibly not within my lifetime, assuming I live to an average age for a person born in the UK.)
