The joke barely samples a long list of predictions made for the dire consequences of a no-deal Brexit. Those pretend-Brexiteers should also be inflicted with a tomato and strawberry shortage and charged extra for their Christmas dinner shop. Some of them should lose their jobs, and while they might have to pay less on their mortgages, the house they’re paying off will lose up to a fifth of its value. Also, they might find that the new neighbour who just moved in next door is a fugitive from a European country, who figures he’s less likely to be caught in Britain because police can’t see his arrest warrant or criminal records. Remain supporters ramped up their protests at Westminster this week. Credit:Getty Images A no-deal Brexit, which could happen in less than two months’ time, would affect almost every part of the British Isles in myriad ways: factories, public services, supermarkets, hospitals, holiday plans. Swathes of industry will find they are charged new tariffs to export to their biggest markets, and will have to source supplies through ports clogged by new red tape delivered by grumpy truck drivers charging a premium for the extra work.

On the macro scale, the Bank of England’s latest predictions for a no-deal, no-transition Brexit are an eventual hit to GDP of 5.5 per cent. Unemployment would nearly double to 7 per cent and inflation lurch from 2 to 5.25 per cent. Meanwhile on the continent, the European Union will be handing out mitigation funds from an account usually reserved for floods and volcanic eruptions. Bank chiefs say they would prefer "Marxist" Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn in charge than a no-deal Brexit. Credit:AP These are not the wild imaginings of Remainiacs. They’re the predictions of government experts, industry bodies and economists. Two of the biggest banks in the City of London, the Financial Times reported, have concluded they’d prefer “Marxist” Jeremy Corbyn and his wealth-redistributing chancellor in Downing Street to a no-deal Brexit.

When asked this week to admit that no one actually knows how bad a no-deal Brexit would be, the man in charge of preparations, cabinet minister Michael Gove, replied “the future is known only to the Almighty”. Nevertheless, it is Gove’s job to assure people that turbulence can be smoothed – not least by more than £6 billion ($10.8 billion) of public funds mobilised to throw at the problem. Loading Boris Johnson was chosen by his party to be prime minister precisely because he was willing to put a no-deal Brexit back on the table, after his predecessor Theresa May sought repeated extensions to Britain’s departure from the bloc in order to avoid it, the latest of which extends to Halloween (October 31). He insists that without the threat of a no-deal Brexit, he cannot bring the EU to the table to renegotiate the current, unratified deal.

His position tries to straddle a paradox: no-deal Brexit is horrific enough to force the EU to reopen the deal it considers closed, yet it is worth putting the country through the pain should negotiations fall through. The deal they are quarrelling over was originally considered a footnote, a formal agreement to tie up loose ends before the UK and EU set the parameters of their new relationship. But the Withdrawal Agreement has become totemic. And its alternative, the “no-deal” or “clean break” or “WTO” Brexit, is considered such a nightmare scenario by some that it has led 22 Conservative MPs, including some of the party’s most experienced and respected figures, to rebel against the government and help pass a law to try to make sure it does not happen. Oliver Letwin, one of the authors of this law, told parliament “we are between a rock and a hard place, and in this instance the hard place is better than the rock - it is as simple as that”. The most infamous recent assessment of the risks of a no-deal Brexit was the ‘Operation Yellowhammer’ report leaked to The Sunday Times.

The dossier warned of potential delays at the border for the flow of goods lasting up to six months, shortages of some foods, price increases for utilities, fuel and food, and increased checks, queues and delays for UK citizens travelling to Europe. A low level of public and business readiness would be compounded by the extra demands of the approaching Christmas season and its impact on warehouse availability for stockpiling goods in the UK. “Customer behaviour” – read, hoarding – could lead to petrol shortages across the country. It said supply chains for medicines were “particularly vulnerable” to border delays caused by a no-deal Brexit. In a subsequent leak, the Times was shown confidential files from the National Health Service warning of medicines that had proven impossible to stockpile and might have to be flown in at short notice and great expense, including treatments for schizophrenia and epilepsy. Three leading health think tanks wrote to the government this week warning a no-deal Brexit risked intensifying the NHS staffing crisis and increasing shortages of medicines and medical devices as well as making them more expensive.

The Yellowhammer dossier was downplayed by Gove as an old document consisting of “projections of what may happen in a worst-case scenario”, though it was reportedly dated August and described as a “base case”. Gove has insisted “everyone will have the food they need [and] there will be no shortages of fresh food”. The British Retail Consortium has called this “categorically untrue”. “Soft fruits and vegetables, such as strawberries, tomatoes and lettuces, would likely see reduced availability as they are largely imported during the winter months,” it said. “The reality remains that a no-deal Brexit in October would present the worst of all worlds for our high streets and those who shop there. Retailers will be preparing for Christmas, stretching already limited warehousing capacity, and the UK will be importing the majority of its fresh food from the EU, magnifying the impact of border delays.” My understanding is that very little of that will happen Cambridge Judge Business School's Dr Graham Gudgin

But Dr Graham Gudgin, from the Cambridge Judge Business School at the University of Cambridge, is having none of this. He dismisses the Yellowhammer document as a “worst-case scenario”. “I assume the government has a plan for asteroid strikes, without expecting one might happen in the next few weeks,” he says. On the short-term Brexit impacts, Gudgin says they have mostly been based on predictions of congestion in the ports and “my understanding is that very little of that will happen”, he says. The government will prioritise the free passage of fresh food and medicine over any checks – “if there is any possibility of lorries backing up it will just let them through”, he says. And as for the long-term impacts of a change in the terms of trade between the UK and EU, Gudgin is scathing of Treasury modelling which he says has “greatly exaggerated” the impact of a no-deal Brexit “possibly by 400 per cent”. Treasury has a bad record and a “Remainer bias”, he says, and made some bad assumptions, miscalculating the amount of “extra” trade the UK does with Europe by being a member of the EU, and exaggerating the knock-on effect between trade and productivity.

After “40 years of marketing and brand recognition” Europe won’t stop buying British overnight, Gudgin says, and the depreciation of the pound should offset the impact of any new tariffs, for instance on the car industry (he concedes the lamb industry will be hit hard). Loading Gudgin’s claims have been disputed. The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, the peak car industry body, has said a no-deal Brexit would “have a devastating impact on the sector… add billions to the cost of importing and exporting and put jobs at risk”. It estimates WTO tariffs would add £1.8 billion to the cost of exports and £2.7 billion to the cost of imports. And the British Ports Association last year warned that “for parts of the ports industry, namely Roll-on Roll-off port operations, which handle the majority of the UK’s trade with the EU, a ‘no deal’ could be a serious challenge and lead to significant disruption at the border.” Last month BPA chief executive Richard Ballantyne said “the industry is as ready as it can be for a ‘no deal’ although it is clear that this is about mitigating disruption at certain ports, not avoiding it”.

The UK in a Changing Europe think tank of economists and analysts issued a report this week on a no-deal Brexit warning the short-term effects are actually much harder to predict than the long-term ones. Loading “Ten to 15 years down the line we’re pretty certain, because there’s good economic evidence of how this works, that being outside the single market and customs union will have a significant negative impact on the UK economy,” says the group’s director Anand Menon. “Whether or not that means hundreds of miles of queues at Dover on November 1 we’re less certain about.” Report co-author Jonathan Portes, a professor of economics at King’s College, London, discounts the horror stories of delays and shortages in the short term. Christmas dinner will be more expensive, and those lucky enough to holiday abroad may find it harder, but there will be upsides: cheaper Australian wine, for example.