droid

Well-known member
Get out while you still can.

What happens next?

On a micro scale: I'm stockpiling enough essential medicines to keep me alive for six months, and will in due course try and stockpile enough food for a couple of weeks. I'm also going to try and move as much of my savings into other currencies as possible, preferably in financial institutions accessible from but outside the UK. (I expect a Sterling crisis to follow promptly in event of NDB. We saw Sterling drop 10% the day after the referendum—and certain people made a fuck-ton of money by shorting the stock market; I expect it to go into free fall if our trade with the EU is suddenly guillotined.)

On a macro scale:

Airports and the main container freight ports for goods entering the UK will shut down on day 1. There will be panic buying. I expect widespread rioting throughout the UK and sectarian violence in Northern Ireland (contra public received wisdom, NI is never quiet and this summer has been bad.)

A currency crisis means that goods (notably food) entering the UK will spike in price, even without punitive trade tariffs.

There will be mass lay-offs at manufacturing plants that have cross border supply chains, which means most of them.

After week 1 I expect the UK to revert its state during the worst of the 1970s. I just about remember the Three Day Week, rolling power blackouts, and more clearly, the mass redundancies of 1979, when unemployment tripled in roughly 6 months. Yes, it's going to get that bad. But then the situation will continue to deteriorate. With roughly 20% of the retail sector shut down (Amazon) and probably another 50% of the retail sector suffering severe supply chain difficulties (shop buyers having difficulty sourcing imported products that are held up in the queues) food availability will rapidly become patchy. Local crops, with no prospect of reaching EU markets, will be left to rot in the fields as the agricultural sector collapses (see concluding remarks, section 5.6).

Note that during her time as Home Secretary, Theresa May presided over 30% cuts in police numbers. During the recent state visit by Donald Trump, virtually every police force in the UK had to cancel all leave just to maintain cover for those officers temporarily assigned to POTUS' security detail (the policing operation was on a scale comparable to the 2011 summer riots ... when there were many, many more officers available). Also, police and emergency service workers will be trying to source food, medicines, and the necessities of life for themselves and their own families: there may be significant absenteeism from critical posts just as everything comes to a head.

I expect the government will collapse within 1-4 weeks. There will be a state of emergency, managed under the Civil Contingencies Act (2004) (which replaced earlier civil defense emergency legislation). Emergency airlifts of medicines, food, and fuel may take place—but it's hard to see the current US administration lending a hand.

Most likely the crisis will end with the UK crashing back into the EU, or at least into Customs Union and statutory convergence—but on EU maximalist terms with none of the opt-outs negotiated by previous British governments from Thatcher onwards. The negotiating position will most likely resemble that of Greece in 2011-2015, i.e. a vastly weaker supplicant in a state of crisis and near-collapse, and the British economy will take a generation to recover—if it ever manages to.

(This is, by the way, not the worst scenario I can envisage. The worst case is that the catastrophic collapse of the world's sixth largest trading economy, combined with a POTUS whose understanding of economics is approximately as deep as that of Louis XVI, will lead to a global financial crisis on the scale of 2007-08—but without leadership as credible as, say, George W. Bush and/or Gordon Brown to pull our collective nuts out of the fire. In which case we're looking at a global banking collapse, widespread famine due to those crop shortages, and a wave of revolutions the like of which the planet hasn't seen since 1917-18. But hopefully that won't happen, right? Because only a maniac would want to burn everything down in order to provide elbow room for a new white supremacist ethnostate world order. Oops, that would be Steve Bannon.)

Anyway: the most likely historical legacy of a no-deal Brexit will be the final refutation of the common British misconception that the UK is still a global superpower, possibly accompanied by Scottish secession and re-entry to the EU, Irish reunification in some sort of federal system, re-acquisition of Gibraltar by Spain, and the disintegration of the Conservative (and possibly Labour) parties at the next general election.

I just hope I'm still alive at the end of it.

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2018/07/that-sinking-feeling.html
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
"Charles Stross, 53, is a full-time science fiction writer and resident of Edinburgh, Scotland."

I'm not saying anything there is not gonna happen, and I for one will also be stockpiling food, but this is a gift to the type of person who uses the phrase Project Fear unironically. That said, I do foresee a whole world of bad shit come 29 March 2019.

Fuck it, this guy is probably completely on point. I am legitimately terrified about next year.
 
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droid

Well-known member
Sure, he's a sci fi author, a breed of people whose main fault was their lack of creativity when predicting precisely how insane our dystopian future would be.
 

sufi

lala
Sure, he's a sci fi author, a breed of people whose main fault was their lack of creativity when predicting precisely how insane our dystopian future would be.
he's a wee bit unstable though isnt it? This piece was hearteningly positive, only a few weeks back https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2018/06/the-pivot.html almost on a level with Simon "project hope" Jenkins https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jul/19/no-deal-brexit-britain-eu-wto-march
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
convince supermarket workers to distribute free food. free flights. free transport. this is our time. come on lads. let's shine. we've been waiting since 1796
 

droid

Well-known member
he's a wee bit unstable though isnt it? This piece was hearteningly positive, only a few weeks back https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2018/06/the-pivot.html almost on a level with Simon "project hope" Jenkins https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jul/19/no-deal-brexit-britain-eu-wto-march

That was prior to the white paper fiasco and the dawning realisation that the ERG types would happily see no-deal come to pass. I guess he's as vulnerable to the psychic effects of current events as the rest of us.
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
I love the implication that this would have been a totally normal thing to talk about on the bus if it had been some other time of day.

You know that night buses have their own rules. The worry is that the whole country is about to become a night bus at 4am. That you can't get off.
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
"This is not just about stockpiling. That concept, what it is, is about making sure that we will be able to continue to do the things that are necessary once we have left the European Union, if we leave without a deal."

What things? Eating? So the real issue in independent Britain is not about freedom of movement for EU citizens, so much as whether anyone will have any energy to move at all. Christ, they're not even bothering to pretend this won't be a catastrophe.
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
i have unshakable faith in the lads and lasses. this is going to make us one big family. full nudity, interracial orgies, occupation of private housing. get in.
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
we'll use the banks as clubs. no crusty tekno though sorry.

Our boys in the armed forces will turn their guns on old bill and their bosses.

lads.
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
we'll threaten google and tesla with the almighty power of the workers bomb. no more patents. strictly usufruct business. we're on it. go on boys.
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
arm the kurds in germany. no work for you you krauts. you must obey the central cybernetic social brain. this will be difficult but your management positions must be abolished as a rebuke to you trying to dominate the world for 100 years.

break up the troica. we can do it.. terminate. joint mass trigger of article 50s. instantaneous break up.
 
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thirdform

pass the sick bucket
open the hospitals. all power to the nurses. no more doctors orders. every nurse will hold the doctors family ransome for every consultation. over and over again until doctors stop being social engineering cunts. no cleaners. no computers. give us your skills. kick em out.
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
no need for psychologist cops. the lads and lasses are made of steel. you won't find more courageous and bravehearted spirit than them ever. the true british speciality of improvising and making the most out of a nonexistent catastrophe. russian revolutionaries will have nothing on us.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
I knew right away you all were fucked but I admit I didn't grasp until recently just how comprehensively and utterly fucked

definitely didn't foresee how incompetently/irresponsibly your government would handle seemingly every decision related to Brexit

guess I thought more like recession etc aftermath of the financial meltdown but it seems more like somewhere between the Great Depression and Armageddon

among other things, seems like the perfect scenario for the emergence of fascism

not that we're a shining example right now but dude, fucking A
 
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