I voted for Brexit but now I’ve looked into the details of a no-deal scenario, I’m terrified

The only way leaving the EU without a deal could work is by shredding workers’ right, lowering taxes and turning the country into a Thatcherite haven. The British people simply won’t accept it

With 101 days to go to Brexit, I suppose it’s best to be rational and logical about the no-deal planning that has been announced by the government. I mean, if you’re going to jump off a cliff without a parachute, it’s quite right that you should make sure that you’ve got clean underpants on, a packed lunch ready and enough fuel in the car to get you to your destination.

The prime minister, it is pretty clear, is playing a dangerous game. She will do whatever it takes to force MPs to choose between her deal and no deal, and remove any other options, such as a second referendum. She is gambling that Labour, Lib Dem and SNP moderates will look over the cliff edge and, for fear of worse, hold their nose and vote for her deal. The danger is that they won’t, that Jeremy Corbyn will be bloody-minded enough to defy you and minimise the rebellion in his own party, and we will crash out. And no contingency planning can mitigate the effects of accidental Brexit.

You see, there is only so much that £2bn worth of emergency measures can do. You could make it £20bn, or £200bn and it wouldn’t be sufficient. As the various official guidance documents have already made painfully clear, across many areas of life, the British government will be powerless if we crash out of the European Union with no transition to, as yet unknown, future trade arrangements.

For example, if you’re a Japanese or German carmaker in Britain, you can certainly organise the annual shutdown for 29 March and after, because you know things will be getting fairly hairy then. But sooner or later you’re going to have to go back to work and figure out how to make and sell cars with bits missing, because the components are hanging around in Calais or somewhere on the M20, when they should be being fitted into a nice new Mini Cooper. Then they’ll need to work out how to sell their cars in Europe when they have a 10 per cent tariff slapped on them. Some Eurosceptics say that any business that can’t slice 10 per cent off its cost base isn’t doing its job properly. We’ll see how Nissan, Toyota, Honda and BMW respond to that, and how big the subsidies these motor giants demand of the British government will turn out to be. Too high, probably.

If you’re a lamb farmer the British government will advise that there will be a 40 per cent tax on your exports when you attempt to export them to the European Union, and that the inevitable disruption at the ports will mean your livestock may be hanging around in the back of a lorry for an unconscionable time. So maybe don’t bother? Maybe diversify? Open a hotel? Farm shop? Try to divert the exports that usually go to France to China or Saudi Arabia? The Department for International Trade can advise on that, but won’t be equipped to sell a single kilo of meat. Up to you, anyhow.

If you’re a city investment bank and you find yourself losing clients because you are shut out of the EU single market, you’ll probably have already set up an office in the EU and exported a few jobs. You’ll be open to moving many more if needs be, and writing off the money you’ve sunk in those nice new offices in Canary Wharf and the training you’ve provided for your British workforce. You are footloose, even if the staff are not. Sadiq Khan and Liam Fox tell you London is “open for business”. You can prove otherwise, though you don’t want to.

The truth is that Whitehall can no more rescue Britain from a no-deal Brexit than anyone else. There is not the money to make good all the losses that will be suffered by all the industries that will be affected. In some sectors the effects will be immediate; in others they will take many years, if not decades to materialise.

It may be that such dislocation to the economy will eventually be righted. Probably through a major devaluation in sterling – which will cut the purchasing power of already depressed British wages – new markets will be found, and Britain will find new ways to make its living in the world. Economies can and do adjust to shocks, just as Britain adjusted to joining the then European Communities after 1973 – but that, too, was quite painful, with higher unemployment and inflation partly as a result.

So why not back Theresa May deal in that circumstance? Is that not a no-brainer?

Maybe, if you take the understandable view that leaving the EU is all about damage limitation. The UK-EU withdrawal agreement, and the unknown future trade deal, really is the worst of all worlds. Leaving aside the Northern Irish backstop, it does mean Britain will be a rule-taker, committed to accepting aspects of the single market and/or the customs union indefinitely. These may suit Britain or not, but there will be no opportunity for the UK to make its own arrangements to compete in world markets, including the EU. The problem with the prime minister’s deal isn’t so much the Irish border, but the much wider issue about what the future UK-EU trade deal will actually be. That is why it is a “blind Brexit” – we have no idea what our new economic rule book will look like. All we know is that we’ll have little say over it and the Europeans will not allow us to undercut them.

The main problem with the no-deal Brexit isn’t so much the immediate chaos – bad as that would be – or the long-term damage to the UK’s trade with Europe, which is inevitable too. The bigger problem is not having a long-term plan to build a competitive economy that will function and make the British prosperous in such challenging conditions. What should have been made explicit by the majority of Brexiteers is that the only way to make no-deal Brexit work is to begin a radical liberalisation of the economy. That would mean shredding troublesome workers’ rights, opening up somnolent consumer markets to intense competition, slashing taxes on business, unilaterally dropping tariffs and quotas on imports, cutting the welfare state and generally letting rip. No one ever told the British that that was the way to make Brexit work – to turn Britain into a low-cost, business-friendly, light-regulation, privatised Thatcherite centre of enterprise, the Singapore of Europe as it is occasionally known.

That may be fanciful indeed, but it just happens to be the only way to make a truly no-deal Brexit future work. It is not matter of whether the government is ready for such a future, but whether the British people are prepared to accept it, or even know about it, Leavers and Remainers alike. Politically, far more than economically, the British are not ready for no deal, whatever they thought they voted for.