Most businesses will make the best of Brexit.
From a broader perspective, however, vandals are using the Brexit vote to destroy Britain. The referendum was in law directional only; neither the government nor the Brexiteers had or have a coherent plan for how to exit or what happens afterwards.
It looks as though it’s going to take 3 or more years to work out how to exit and to conclude whatever negotiations are necessary. We will continue to be subject to EU laws throughout that period, and unable to conclude trade deals independently until after we exit. Sensible companies that want to trade with the EU are already making arrangements to maintain access to the single market post-Brexit and that will divert long term employment and profit away from the UK. It’s difficult to imagine these losses actually replaced by trade with more distant countries with whom we won’t have trade deals until sometime after we’ve left the EU. We don’t even have the resources and skills necessary to negotiate any of the trade deals the Brexiteers claim they can deliver.
In Wonderland, things can be so because someone says they are; in our world, the survival of the soft border in Northern Ireland and the Union with Scotland are incompatible with the wishes of some of the people in England and Wales to reduce immigration. In any case, it will prove impossible to maintain the society in which we live without ongoing and substantial immigration.
