Being a sad sod

One of the disappointing aspects about the BREXIT vote was the dearth of real information. Much of the public voted on the reliance of the truth in a sound bite and since these were delivered by politicians, the truth was a matter of circumspection. Having voted on peripheral  matters such as immigration, nationalism, legal subjection to the EU bureaucracy we now come down to the nitty gritty of how to untangle ourselves from the bear-hug of the huge economic and technical inter-relationship which has been the under laying and invisible structure that is the essence of our relationship. Like the body, the blood flow through the body is reliant on there being no obstruction, otherwise there will be catastrophic results and even death.

Take banking and the use of what is called a "passport" to allow each bank, both here and in the EU to transact business within and between banks. The passport system is at risk and therefore the inter banking system is at risk. Given that financial services is one of the largest earners accounting for 12% of the income which flows into this country, this income is very significant and we will be much poorer without it.

Of course the hypothesise that, as one door closes another opens and that we will, in the long run,  have some sort of equivalence. But as with any new sort of relationship there is no surety that it will work, it might in fact be more prudent to expect a diminishing in our living standards, not because we were not prepared to roll up our sleeves but because the world has become so complex, nothing can be done without the explicit agreement of someone else. Mankind has created a monster in so far as independence is illusory and much of the pre BREXIT rhetoric only spoke in terms of being free to make our own decisions.
Only now are the people discussing the problems in the detail because they are now being forced to as they try to make a fist of a difficult situation. The holistic nature of finance and the Gordian  knots which seems to be the very nature of the way business is conducted is only now becoming clear and that, only if you are a sad sod who listens to the select committee debates.
Heaven only knows what the chap on the Clapham omnibus thinks.