The economic impact of the various flavours of Brexit has already been estimated, not least by the government themselves (though infamously denied by the man who ordered them) and discussed at length here. Some of those chickens are coming home to roost in manufacturing, though of course, like the immediate and sustained fall in the pound on June 23 2016, that’ll be nothingtodowithbrexit™.
Isnt the thread really only another rhetorical question anyway? Look, it’s like this- Jeremy and his team are getting behind a Brexit that will work for everyone and aren’t all these predictions about Brexit a bit over the top? (purred in the voice of Barry Gardiner).
It’s what I meant three years ago, that Labour and the Tories are two cheeks of the same politically self serving arse and we know what they’re going to produce. It’s what arses do.
The lengthy discussions about the economic impact of the various kinds of Brexit have, like the discussions of much else, been remarkable for their symmetry: leavers deny the validity of the reports insisting on the fact that Brexit will be damaging, remainers deny the validity of those same reports when they point out that that damage would be much less significant in the case of a soft Brexit. In the one case there is a refusal to consider the evidence in front of everyone's eyes (businesses failing or packing up at least partly because of Brexit), in the other a refusal to consider logic (these businesses cite the prospect of no deal and supply chain problems, neither of which would be an issue with a soft Brexit).
There is also more than a little symmetry around this insistence that
they're all the same. In the case of leavers of course it's a dangerous, populist assault on democratic institutions; in the case of remainers it's just weary recognition that
our political class has failed us, and that a new kind of politics is necessary. Both sides claim to be shocked and outraged by the foundational fact of a party political system: parties need to "serve themselves" - hold themselves together, win support - if they are to govern. Stamping their feet about this necessary identity they hide the difference: the Conservatives want to govern so that they can set fire to the country; Labour want to govern so that they can end the suffering of millions of people.
(And where are the SNP in all of this, while we're at it? They appear to be acting with complete disregard for this natural law of party politics, that is entirely selflessly - despite their not entirely consistent approach to Brexit. In no way are they using all this to further their own agenda. From the English this is all part of the patronising colonial schtick [Can we all move to Scotland! Oh your politicians are marvellous can we have them down here!] but from actual supporters it has to be considered disingenuous.)
There was a report out last week that showed the typical No Deal supporter to be old and wealthy: that is, very likely a beneficiary of asset price inflation, dependent neither on paid work or the state. Anyone who can hold Tory no deal in one hand and a Labour soft Brexit in the other and say, See! They're the same! has to be similarly well-insulated from the effects of the former. There's the key symmetry. In the end it's not some Tory-Labour pact that risks giving us no deal, it's a Hard Leave-Hard Remain alliance between radicalised wealthy pensioners.