I took the weekend off. My sons tell me it is half term. It was warm, and good walking weather. It was time for tea, outside, in February, albeit with a good jumper in the mix. For a minute or two it was possible to imagine that everything was OK in the world.<\/p>\n
We weren\u2019t after all, about to smash all our international relationships.<\/p>\n
Or partition Ireland.<\/p>\n
And threaten the Union.<\/p>\n
Whilst voluntarily crashing thousands of companies that will fail as their business models are torn from under them.<\/p>\n
Which will create significant unemployment.<\/p>\n
In the short term it would be great to think we\u2019re not threatening food and medicine supplies.<\/p>\n
And we\u2019re not doing all this because an illegally run, non-binding referendum provided an inconclusive result that supposedly required us to crash out of the EU when this was not an advertised option in advance.<\/p>\n
Because the weather was warm, and the day seemed peaceful, all that could be forgotten for a minute and maybe, just for a moment, it was almost possible to think that \u2018they\u2019 would sort that out, because that\u2019s what \u2018they\u2019ve\u2019 always done.<\/p>\n
\u2018They\u2019 did that when the City almost collapsed a decade ago.<\/p>\n
\u2018They\u2019 make things happen.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n So \u2018they\u2019 will do it again, you could almost believe.<\/p>\n And I strongly suspect that\u2019s what most people think will happen on Brexit. It\u2019s presumed that this is just another fine mess \u2018they\u2019 can sort.<\/p>\n But for \u2018them\u2019 to do that there has to be a functioning\u00a0 <\/span>system. A known set of rules. A working IT system. An infrastructure that exists to be bent to cover the situation.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n And that\u2019s the problem of No Deal. There will be no infrastructure. No rules. Nothing to make it work. Nothing to bend to make it function. Oh, and no properly functioning IT either.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The things that \u2018they\u2019 need to make No Deal work don\u2019t exist. That\u2019s why it will be chaos.<\/p>\n But when the sun shines it was almost possible to forget that, for a moment.<\/p>\n And I strongly suspect that\u2019s the state most people are in. Which is why this might be so painful.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"