Well itu2019s probably the best outcome.There are two possible outcomes from u201cbrexitu201d.The first is that the government agrees to an EEA+ deal which is basically the same as EU membership (four freedoms, large payments to the budget, customs union) but without having any say in how the EU is administered. Realistically this is the only deal the EU will accept, and the only one that will fulfil the commitment made by Theresa May last December to keep the Irish Border open.The second is that there is another referendum and the UK remains in the EU (This would undoubtedly be very close and probably put us into a position far worse than the one that the original referendum was supposed to solve).I put the first at 70% and the second at 30%.It all depends on HOW we get to the first outcome. At this moment (August 17th 2023. it looks like Theresa May now finally understands that there is no other alternative. My suspicion is that she is prepared to throw down her own political career to save the Tory party. I expect that the negotiations will go to the wire, but (probably at the last moment) on the 29th she will agree to an EEA+ deal, it may be dressed up as u201cAssociate membershipu201d of the EU.This will go down very badly in the country, as it will please neither side (and I know that people are talking about EEA membership as a temporary measure, but the EU will not agree to anything that does not include us in the next budget cycle IE:- 2027.) It will also put the tories out of power for a generation. BUT the tories will survive to fight another day.In my view an equally possible outcome is that sometime before the 29th March Theresa May will be ousted as leader (possibly very close tot he actual leave date) and the new leader decides that all the advice of diplomats and civil servants is wrong and that the country can threaten a u201cNo-Dealu201d brexit and the EU will back down.What happens next I can only glean from people that I know and my own experience, obviously there will be many other implications that I donu2019t know about.The port of Dover is my preferred entry and exit point for the UK by road. At 11pm on the 29th March the UK leaves the EU. Most specifically (in the first days) we leave the VAT zone. The port of Dover has four lanes for cars and buses for passport control. There are six lanes for lorries that then go down to three for inspection. There are no publicly accessible customs offices at the port of Dover (There is a customs office connected to a lorry park but that is not for the use of the general public, anyone needing to clear customs on leaving the UK has to clear at Heathrow Airport).The UK is signed up to the LeTouquet agreement which means that all passport control is carried out in Dover. At the moment this is organised that your passport is inspected to enter France first and then leave the UK after. Often these booths are not manned at all.After 11pm on the 29th March in a best case scenario the EU will give UK citizens an automatic visa waiver without any kind of landing card, simply a stamp in their passport to show when they entered the Schengen zone.The worst case would be that the EU (In reality the French) will require a landing card to be filled out and to state that the applicant will not engage in any employment or business while in the EU. They may also require proof that the car has a green card for insurance purposes (our automatic car insurance runs out with our EU membership).After passport control there will then need to be at least two lanes for customs, Goods to Declare and Nothing to declare. If you are carrying goods worth more than (Roughly, they will come up with an exact figure) u20ac400 or any goods for commercial purposes, then you have goods to declare. You will have stop and pay Duty/VAT on those goods. If (like me) you have a Carnet listing goods you will be taking into and out of the EU then you have to declare those goods and have the French customs stamp your Carnet and possibly inspect the goods. In December 1992 I processed one of the last carnets to go through the port of Dover, when I came back in January 1993 there was still a customs post at the port, Ever since if I need to go outside the EU I have had to clear at Heathrow. My experience is that the French will not process a carnet unless it has an exit stamp from the UK, A colleague got stitched (before the LeTouquet agreement) and had to return to the UK to get an exit stamp, a full four hour round trip.Lorries I know less about but for customs purposes there will only be two available lanes for u201cGoods to Declareu201d. Each lorry will have to have itu2019s manifest examined to see how much VAT is payable and at a very minimum a promise to pay extracted from the owners of the shipment.However, there is massive misunderstanding as to what is in these lorries and how long they will take to clear. Even if we accept the oft repeated six minute figure, the tailbacks are still very significant. However the lorries that travel through he Port of Dover are not (by and large) shipping containers with a simply tally of the identical contents.A lorry could (and do to my knowledge) carry all sorts of things. A single lorry could contain a used fork lift truck that has been sent for service in the UK. WTO rules state that when something crosses a border you pay duty on it, yes I know this was a surprise to me, I imported a Cooke lens from the USA and I was told I would have to pay 3 1/2% import duty, despite the fact that it was made in Leicester. So unless the forklift was put on a carnet before it left the EU there would be duty to pay as well as VAT EVEN IF THE FORKLIFT WAS MADE IN THE EU. The lorry may also contain goods manufactured in the UK, these would need to have a CE certificate to confirm that they comply with European regulations.In a No Deal scenario it would be up to the French to decide how they implement the rules. Do they simply take the details of each shipment so that each member state can recover the duty and VAT when the shipment arrives, or do they demand that the importers settle up then and there? For some consignments within Europe there may be no actual u201cimporteru201d just a regular company. This company may not understand why they are being asked for money and may say that they will not accept the charges and refer it back to the British u201cexportingu201d company. many people in the EU have no experience at all of Importing/Exporting outside the EU or moving goods before the advent of the single market. If the French decide to deal with every lorry in turn and if problems like this take an hour to sort out, you are down to two lorries an hour. Recently I sat behind a coach for an hour in the check-in queue at P+O because they had issues with payment. At Dover there is just not enough space to park up the lorries that arrive without the correct documents.When you add to these u201cGenuineu201d issues the fact that the French have no interest in making a u201cNo-Dealu201d brexit anything but a total nightmare until the UK inevitably signs up to an EEA+ deal. Even in December 1992 when we last had (a very reduced) set of customs regulations to adhere to and had been cooperating with the French for 20 years we had 1/4 of the lorry traffic going through the Port of Dover that we have today (Yes just the PORT there was no Channel Tunnel then, the channel tunnel has never operated with any customs of any kind).I have five children, and for my sins I attend a lot of childrenu2019s parties, the dad of a friend of my sonu2019s works for a large super market chain, doing IT for the logistics. I was discussing my plans for a possible Brexit (Make sure Iu2019m in Prague at the time and not leave until I have a Schengen Visa). He told that his employers (and all other supermarkets) have made no plans at all for a No-Deal Brexit and refuse to do so unless the government pays them to do so. They have thousands of cross-border deals with a 24 hour window. Any disruption to supply chains at Dover would mean goods started to disappear from supermarkets in three days, not because they could not get goods into the UK, In theory the UK could temporarily drop all import checks but simply because no road haulier would accept the risk of not being about to get his Lorry and driver back for a week after sending it to the UK. The only way to Guarantee imports would be for the supermarkets to compensate the hauliers for the delays. The limited research they had done was to examine 20 food products at random that were u201cMade in the UKu201d it turns out that the only one that could be made without ingredients from the EU was own brand Pitta Bread. There would be no question of people actually going hungry but the range of food products on sale in supermarkets would dramatically reduce. Food producers and processors would have to potentially have to lay off (temporarily) thousands of workers. It would not be in the supermarkets interest to find any solution to this other than a resumption of the single market.At the moment the Conservative ministers are refusing to even speak to business leaders. After two weeks of a u201cNo-Dealu201d brexit they will have no choice, the leader regardless of who they are will have to do a deal with the EU and there is only one deal on the table.A No-Deal brexit will have the same outcome as a u201cDealu201d with the exception that after three weeks of it nobody will ever mention leaving our deal with the EU.A No-Deal Brexit would also consign the Tories to History in the same way as the liberals were in the Early 20th Century. By calling a referendum on membership of the EU they made the suggestion that there was a realistic alternative to EU membership, and the ensuing disaster could only be blamed on them.No-Deal will hand the EU precisely what they want, large payments from the UK for access to the Single Market without having to consider British objections to any policy.
