Well it will all be getting very real very quickly. Article 50 is due to be invoked in March. The chance of a rabbit appearing out of a hat and changing the scenery is now virtually zero, There is still an outside chance of a run on the pound but if it didn't happen after the vote it probably won't happen now. The other possibility was an internal crisis in the Tory party. Unlike Labour, the Tories can hide their internal battles to some extent, so we won't know if this was ever a danger until long after the event. But if a pro-EU coup was coming it would have come by now. So it looks like it is game on.
So the next big story will be the negotiation. I am hoping that both sides will converge on a common objective, which is creating the conditions for the UK to rejoin. This is obviously in both sides' interests. The fact is that although it will always be in Britain's interests to be fully involved with European politics, as it has been since at least the time of King Offa, it won't always be easy to get a large majority behind that notion. If Britain is falling dramatically behind the rest of Europe, it will be hard to sell the idea that we need to go back in. The problem will no doubt be blamed on the EU and attitudes against it will harden. But equally, if the UK was doing a lot better than the continent the argument for not rocking the boat would be a strong one. That would be a nice problem to have in some ways.
The ideal situation for a Bre-entry would be much like the one in the early seventies. Britain was doing pretty well, but the EU was doing just a spit better. That way it is much more an even tempered debate where you can weigh up the pros and cons.
So if I were on the Euro side of the negotiations I certainly wouldn't want to concede much to the British. You don't want to positively reinforce leaving as a way of getting a good deal. But I would not want to do them any significant harm either. We have always been friends after all, and we want them to come back as soon as possible. It is hard to see how the British negotiators would want anything different themselves. They will all be pro-Europeans after all. They'll be looking for keeping things ticking over for the re-entry negotiations.
So I expect the news will be pretty neutral from now on, and that should please everyone. Everyone that is except the press, and the feeble minded people who still believe the nonsense they write. But even they will probably still be happy because no doubt the press will keep on lying about what's going on.
Making conditions easy for the UK to rejoin won't be easy. The big problem will be that the EU have made certain things mandatory to adopt when joining the EU that the UK currently are opted out from. I find it hard to believe that the UK would give up sterling and join Schengen for a small economic benefit. Nor can I see the EU bending these rules for the EU, because if the UK could get out them, existing countries & new accession states would also seek to.
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