Six ways to survive a post-Brexit world when the very worst happens

Here's hoping you don't have to take them seriously

Remain Campaign supporters contemplate Brexit as the EU Referendum results come in (AFP)

No-one knows how bad it will get before it – maybe – gets better.

But it always helps to have a plan (even if those who led the Brexit campaign are being accused of not having one.)

So, as the pound hits record lows, share prices plummet and reliably dull ex-Chancellor Alistair Darling tells the Today programme: “We’ve got no government, we’ve got no opposition, the people got us into this mess have run away”, here is the Independent’s How to Survive Brexit guide.

Hopefully, you won’t need to take all these tips seriously. Hopefully.

Stockpile medicines

So it turns out we’re not going to get that £350 million a week extra for the NHS after all. So says Nigel Farage, who told a Question Time audience before the Referendum that the weekly savings from leaving the EU would be more than £350 million.

And Chris Grayling, who has now said Vote Leave only had an “aspiration” to spend £100 million a week more on the NHS – despite its battle bus saying: “We send the EU £350 million a week. Let’s fund our NHS instead.”

But snap out of it. There’s no time to stand around looking shocked.

Given the turmoil Brexit has already unleashed on the markets, we might be lucky if we have an NHS at all, let alone cheap prescription charges or exemptions from payment.

So get over your entirely understandable amazement that some of those Brexit promises weren’t quite what they seemed, and get down to your nearest pharmacist.

Scavenge roadkill

Agreed: as the Brexit turmoil deepens, you might not have a job, a house, or a car.

But your friendly neighbourhood merchant banker will, because the 2008 recession proved that bankers survive everything.

So there will still be roadkill to be eaten. And last Christmas, a particularly prescient Independent report revealed the advice of retired entomologist and roadkill enthusiast Arthur Boyt, of Leave-voting Cornwall.

He suggested such dishes as deer in vinegar, squirrels legs and squashed badger.

Delicious meat-filled meals for all the family, and you don’t even have to be the gun-toting, shooting, killing survivalist type to enjoy it.

So tour those country roads. Maybe you can ask the banker to give you a lift, as part as some sort of ‘will work for roadkill’ deal.

Run for the Cairngorms

Ok, this one was originally suggested for the zombie apocalypse, but it will probably work for Brexit too.

Last year physicists at Cornell University in the US did some statistical modelling of a zombie attack. (They seriously did. You can look up the entry in the Bulletin of the American Physical Society. Just don’t read the bit where it says: “for `realistic' parameters, we are largely doomed.”)

Their advice was to head for the most sparsely populated area possible. They suggested the Northern Rocky Mountains for the US. So a good British equivalent would be the Cairngorms – which may offer the added advantage that as the UK disintegrates in the wake of Brexit, they could end up being EU territory as part of a newly independent Scotland.

Hurry while Irish passport forms last

You’ll need to get a move on with this one.

Anyone with a parent or grandparent born in either Northern Ireland or the Republic of Ireland has an automatic right to Irish – and by extension EU - citizenship. But a lot a lot of people have already cottoned on to this.

Long queues have been spotted outside the Irish passport offices in London and Dublin, and one Belfast post office has already put up a sign saying it has run out of Irish passport forms “due to increased demand.”

They did promise they had put in “an emergency order to meet extra demand”, but maybe it might be a good idea if instead you …

Write a really polite letter to the Polish president

His name is Andrzej Duda. And under Polish law, he has the power to grant Polish – and therefore EU citizenship - to anyone he wishes.

And with some 790,000 Poles now living in the UK, some parts of Poland have complained about declining populations and a growing skills shortage. If you’re a builder, you might be in demand over there.

Although that might change, given that looming Brexit has cast into doubt the future of many of the migrants to the UK from the European Economic Area – despite them having contributed net tax payments to the British Treasury of £22.1 billion between 2001 and 2011.

But you could still try:

Drogi Panie Prezydencie,

Lubię bardzo Pański kraj (chociaż jeszcze go nie odwiedziłem.) Uprzejmie proszę, czy mógłbym przyjechać i zamieszkać z Panem i przemiłymi obywatelami Pańskiego kraju?

Z poważaniem,

Dear Mr President,

I like your country very much (even though I haven’t actually visited it yet.) Please may I come and live with you and your lovely fellow citizens?

Love, X

Always look on the bright side of life

What song better encapsulated the Great British stiff upper lip in the face of all disaster (up to and including crucifixion)?

So learn the lyrics, and when you’re chewing on life/Brexit/scavenged roadkill’s gristle, don’t grumble, give a whistle…

You could also try reading the more optimistic prognostications of The Independent’s Sean O’Grady.