No-deal Brexit: What could day one look like? From transport chaos to medical meltdown

It’s Saturday 30 March 2019 and Britain has gone over the cliff edge.

At 11pm the night before the UK left the EU with no deal agreed. There is no financial liabilities settlement. There is no agreement on EU citizens’ rights or security cooperation. Britain is totally outside the customs union. There’s no single market “transition”.

Nor is there any route to a free trade deal. All Britain has to govern its trade with the EU now is the bare rules of the World Trade Organisation (WTO).

Theresa May announces her resignation and the Conservative Party begins its leadership election process.

Nigel Farage is delighted at the last-minute collapse of the Brexit negotiations and declares outside parliament, as the dawn breaks, that Britain is now truly an independent nation once again.

Jacob Rees-Mogg, now the clear favourite for the Tory leadership having lead the successful campaign to thwart May’s proposed “vassalage” deal, informs BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that although what he describes as a “clean Brexit” will likely entail some “bumpiness” any disruption will be short-lived and ultimately well worth it.

Travellers are the first to feel the bump. UK airports are in chaos, as all flights to mainland Europe have been cancelled since late on Friday.

The WTO rules do not cover aviation. And no aircraft is permitted to fly between the UK and EU airports until a new bilateral agreement on flights is reached.

Weekend motorists in Kent are also suffering, as the roads leading to the ports of Dover and Folkestone soon become gridlocked with stationary lorries.

Each UK export consignment to Europe now has to be checked by customs staff in Calais, with tariffs and VAT collected.

The French port’s infrastructure is rapidly overwhelmed and ferry companies are instructed not to disgorge any more lorries until they can hire and train more officers.

The only option for hauliers bound for the EU is to queue and wait.

Traffic going the other way also locks up, as the UK’s small band of customs staff also soon become swamped, despite instructions for them to check only one incoming consignment from the EU in five.

By the end of the day, gaps are already starting to appear on UK supermarket shelves as shoppers, hearing about the customs crisis, stockpile goods, anticipating that deliveries from Europe will fail to arrive.

Some petrol stations are running low on fuel as tankers have difficulty getting through. Expecting a rush of panic buying, some profiteering operators jack up fuel prices on Sunday to as much as £1.50 a litre.

When the stock markets open on Monday, traders’ screens are drenched in red as UK stocks and investment funds get brutally marked down. Many find they cannot process orders on behalf of European clients due to the sudden demise of the single market passport for financial services.

Bank executives implement their contingency plans, informing thousands of employees that they will either be sacked or relocated to Frankfurt.

Lawyers are commissioned across the Square Mile for a gargantuan battle over trillions of pounds of derivative contracts whose legal status is now suddenly in doubt.

Despite an emergency rate cut and unprecedentedly large financial market liquidity injection from the Bank of England, panic takes hold in the City.

The pound is sinking at its most rapid rate since the night of that Leave vote in the Brexit referendum. One airport bureau de change offers to buy pounds for only a single dollar.

Car plant workers in the midlands and the north east arrive for work only to be told that half of them should go home. The parts they need to work with have not been delivered. They are stuck in transit and the “just in time” delivery system has broken down. The shockwaves ripple out to their thousands of supplier firms. Airbus announces it is closing down its entire plant in Wales, throwing 10,000 out of work at a stroke.

Despite months of stockpiling, many NHS drug deliveries are also held up. Non-urgent operations are cancelled indefinitely. All but the most sick are urged not to present themselves for treatment. One panicking manager of an overstretched hospital turns away a Spanish woman because, he says, as an EU citizen, her right to healthcare in the UK is now unclear. Others follow the precedent. The Madrid government declares that, in retaliation, retired Britons on the Costa del Sol will also be ineligible for Spanish healthcare.

Civil servants frantically hammer the phones, trying to get through to their European counterparts, pleading for the ports and airports to be opened, for emergency supplies to be fast-tracked, for some kind of temporary political agreement on the rights of EU citizens and Britons on the continent.

But the Europeans are divided. Hardliners in Germany, France and the Netherlands insist on no cooperation with the perfidious Brits whatsoever until they agree to honour their £39bn of EU liabilities. They are also consumed with the question of how to deal with Ireland, which has refused to close its border with the north for fear of provoking a Republican terror attack, leaving a gaping hole in the EU’s customs union.

As UK public anger and fear swells, Brexiteers give defensive media interviews. Some blame the chaos on the government’s failure to plan adequately.

Others blame the EU for deliberately sabotaging the UK economy and demand retaliation. Others call for martial law. Not one utters the words “project fear”.

This article was originally published on Friday 27 July 2018.