No-deal Brexit was once a sick Tory joke. Now it's serious

[Soph0571]

No-deal Brexit has suddenly gone serious. It is no longer an exercise in bombast and biceps-flexing. Boris Johnson is about to impose a massive economic sanction on his own country. He is playing with fire: it is a political stunt that has gone horribly wrong.

It is clearly reckless to assume a sensible Brexit deal before the due date of 31 October. Politicians can twiddle their thumbs, others cannot. Since March, the Tories decided collectively to stop working in the nation’s interest and play a game of chicken with Brussels. It has not worked. The government is now planning for crisis.

The outlook is grim. The Institute for Government warns that there is no magic button, no “managed no deal”, to handle border chaos on 1 November. Emergency measures on trucks, plane flights, tourism and immigration will be entirely at the EU’s mercy – as the UK will, overnight, become legally a “foreign state”. We will need to be very nice to Brussels. Even current measures on financial services and aviation are strictly temporary. Rudimentary “technology checks” on truck movements will require a huge infrastructure of certificates, gantries and cameras, inspection depots and tariff collection points. None of this is remotely in place. Sixteen thousand officials will need to be set to work on it, and by October. This is impossible.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jul/29/no-deal-brexit-tory-joke-boris-johnson-economic-britain#tabs-popular-2

I have a really horrible feeling about this...