Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

A seven-year winter or a pleasant surprise? Your guess is as good as mine

A friend reminds me that she sold her house last summer because I warned her 18 months ago that Brexit chaos would loom over every aspect of life by the beginning of 2019. I got that horribly right, and I was right too that the dismissive attitude of Westminster politicians towards the Irish border problem — call it ‘the Barnier trap’ if you prefer, but I can tell you I heard grown-up Irish voices trying in vain to alert UK ministers as long ago as September 2016 — would come back to baulk the entire negotiation.

But would I care to make any sort of prediction for the three months ahead? No, I wouldn’t. I have no idea whether we’re heading for an anti-climax akin to ‘Y2K’, the false fear that the world’s computers would shut down at the stroke of millennium midnight; or a short-term disruption like the fuel tanker protest in 2000; or a strife-torn seven-year winter straight out of Game of Thrones.

Then again, we might be in for a pleasant surprise more like the recovery that gradually gathered momentum after Black Wednesday in 1992, when the pound plunged out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism. I have no inkling which of these scenarios is most likely, and anyone who tells you he has is a fool or a charlatan. I’ll stick my neck out only so far as to say that things are bound to get worse before they get better.

Tired of shopping?

That forecast, such as it is, applies most obviously to continuing bloodshed in the high street — a trend that can only peripherally be blamed on Brexit. UK wages have been rising ahead of inflation while interest rates have barely twitched: consumers still have spending power but are tired and nervous of spending.

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