Brexit: the start of a nightmare
I’m waiting patiently behind the think yellow line. A grey-faced border guard glumly calls me over from his elevated cubicle. Without a word, I hand over my passport and wait.
“So you have decided to return?” he asks.
He looks down at me with a half-drawn faded smile.
After a moment, flicking through the pages of my passport, he slams it down on the counter. “You, go through there” he orders, pointing at a closed white door behind him.
Inside, I seat myself on a steel chair, next to a cold metallic table. Three impeccably dressed gentlemen in pinstriped suits sit opposite, staring at me in silence. Their matching white shirts, bowler hats and Union Jack ties are unnerving. The interrogation begins.
“So, why have you come back?” they ask in a sort of robotic unison.
I give an answer, but it doesn’t matter. They repeat the question in the same dull tone. No matter how I answer this same question keeps coming back. I’m growing increasingly agitated to the extent that I now find myself stood upright, hands clenched to both sides of the table, screaming my answers at the top of my voice.
Suddenly, they stop.
The room falls silent.
I sit back down. They continue staring at me coldly.
Without a word, they simultaneously stretch out their arms and point to the door. So I take my leave.
As I venture out, I walk along a corridor, passing a crowded room of detainees. Eventually, I end up in a large empty baggage hall – I was the only one that got through.
My luggage appears alone on a single creaking conveyor belt. My suitcase has been cut open and taped back together with a few slashes for good measure.
I’m furious and who wouldn’t be.
“What’s this country coming to?”, I yell. My echo rings inside the cavernous hall.
Then, to my complete surprise, an intercom above my head crackles into life:
“We would like to remind visitors that Britain is now closed”.
It was at this point that I woke up. It was a stupid dream, but it bugged me so much. As I sped along the French motorway towards the port of Calais, I pondered on what it meant.
It was my first visit back to the UK since the referendum. Although I voted to remain and I am a staunch supporter of the EU, I fully accept the result and respect the democratic process that took place. However, I am a little worried.
Once Prime Minister Theresa May invokes Article 50, the EU and the UK will only have two years to negotiate a withdrawal agreement. At stake will be freedom of movement across borders, the trade in goods and services and London’s dominance as a global financial capital. None of us know what the UK will look like afterwards.
Therefore, I am going to dream about three possible endings that will hopefully rid me from the memory of this torturous nightmare.
1. The amicable solution
In this dream, exit negotiations seem to go really well. We manage to retain our financial services passport and we still have access to the single market. However, it comes at a price. The government is forced to accept the free movement of people and pay considerably more into the EU’s coffers than before to maintain special access.
Obviously, not everyone is happy. It’s as if the UK hasn’t actually left the EU, but the subscription costs have gone up without us having a say.
The benefits from being unshackled from EU regulations also don’t seem that great. We end up retaining many rules and regulations such as the “working time directive”, which makes it illegal for an employee to work more than an average 48 hours a week. We find out that it’s impractical to do away with some rules and rewrite others.
However, some do change and they are noticeable. For instance, migrant workers no longer get child benefits if their children live elsewhere in the EU. The EU’s crazy fishing quotas are also abandoned so we actually eat the fish that we catch, rather than dumping them in the sea because the fishermen accidentally caught the wrong type of fish.
On the whole, however, very little changes. Britain remains open for business and it prospers despite the heavy levy for remaining in the single market. And, we get to eat more fish and chips – yum.
2. The clean break
Here, negotiations seem tough, but we reach a compromise with the EU – enough to agree trade terms. Although we lose our financial services passport in the single market, we have great powers to curb immigration, which is popular with large swathes of the electorate.
Rather than full access to the single market, the UK enjoys tariff-free trade with its European neighbours and some restrictions on EU immigration. The occasional threats to scrap the deal by over zealous European politicians fall on deaf ears. Money talks and powerful UK and European businessmen make sure the trade doors remain open.
3. The messy divorce
In this version, talks collapse and the UK leaves the EU with very little to show for it. This is the nightmare that I described to you earlier – the fear that Britain’s doors will be closed to Europe. European politicians, keen to make an example of the UK, are not willing to compromise. There is no trade agreement and there won’t be one for another ten years.
The UK government has now slashed corporation tax. Income tax is also lowered significantly. The UK now signs numerous trade agreements with economies outside the European Union: China, India, Russia (our new best friends) and Australia, to name just a few. Immigration is significantly curtailed, except for ultra-rich foreigners and very clever people.
Let’s continue with this dream because it’s linked to the nightmare I had.
There is a huge debate in parliament about the right to privacy following concerns about the growing use of CCTV. The Privacy Act 2020 is passed which inadvertently protects the rights of those who wish to download the latest movies without paying for them. Filmmakers are horrified. More importantly though, it protects the rights to banking privacy, much to the chagrin of the US Inland Revenue Service, and the rest of the EU and Switzerland.
There are huge inflows in the UK’s financial sector, creating the largest private banking industry the world has ever known. Britain remains open – at least to those countries outside the EU – and I wake up well rested.
So I conclude that it doesn’t really matter what happens. It’s true that the wrath wrought against the UK by vengeful EU politicians eager to deter would-be “exiters” cannot be ruled out. But I would advise them not to because we have options. Either way, Britain will remain open and its influence and strength in this world enduring.
After lovely holiday in my beloved country, I returned back to Switzerland where I work, safe in the knowledge that everything will be fine. Even if the waters do get choppy, we can sing a different hymn and wave our proverbial middle fingers at those stubborn EU politicians: “Rule Britannia, Britannia waives the rules, Britons will never, never, never be taken for fools”.
