Waking up on 30th March

Gosh, only six weeks to go before Brexit actually happens! And I rather think it will, bang on schedule, at 11.00pm on Friday 29th March.

We'll all go to bed divorced from the rest of Europe. And wake up next day, on Saturday 30th, wondering what immediate changes there will be. Will there be disturbing reports on the 7.00am BBC Radio 4 News?

I'll be off to Waitrose as usual. Will I see some of the things I usually buy marked up by 10%? Or indeed empty shelves, picked clean by panic-buyers? I'll want diesel for my trip to Scotland on the following Monday. Will I face queues, and a degree of fuel rationing?

Or will there be no discernible changes whatsoever? Just business as usual?

It's hard to tell. I suspect that it will all seem utterly normal and ordinary, the morning after our exit from the EU. And will go on that way for quite a while. Remember the transition from 1999 to 2000? All those Millennium warnings about computers crashing and civilisation falling apart? How the media wound us all up - but it didn't happen.

Do you in fact recall how it was the day after we became functioning members of the EU (then simply the 'Common Market')? No? Well, nothing changed immediately. Life just went on. And in the ensuing years of the 1970s, Utopia didn't arrive. Only rampant inflation that took a long time to bring under control.

Membership of the EU did mean some radical changes in the fullness of time. Almost the first, in 1973, was the introduction of VAT. Then sundry trade, workplace and travel regulations to harmonise the UK with the rest of the EU. Some of these EU-inspired laws made life easier, fairer, or safer for minorities in this country.

Then came the Euro. And - as a first step - membership of a currency scheme. It didn't work for us, and we backed out, never to return.

Back in the 1990s, I was quite a fan of the Euro. I wasn't an ardent supporter of the pound. So far as I was concerned, our traditional currency had already been done to death, brutally killed off when decimalisation took place in 1971. The 'pound' now in use wasn't the same animal. It was a soulless Orwellian currency introduced by a Labour government intent on change for change's sake (and still harping on about those years of 'Tory misrule'). A bastard fake currency that used strange coins (remember the ridiculous decimal half-penny?). Whereas the Euro looked sensibly-designed, fresh, entirely new, and free of sour historical baggage. A radical experiment that looked as if it would deliver, if only on convenience when travelling. And although it might be the first step in creating an eventual continental superpower, it seemed also to be the essential firm foundation for a bright, well-managed and co-operative future.

But we backed away from it. On the whole I feel happier now that we did, but the pound felt damaged, old, sick, and well past its retirement. It needed a Big Bang. A new name, perhaps. I remember some late-1960s debate concerning what to call our forthcoming decimalised currency. It didn't get far, and they kept the 'pound'. But I wanted something fancier: what about Royals, divided into 100 Doubloons? Or Guineas, divided into 100 Pieces? Something that smacked of piracy and swashbuckling and swordplay? As befitted a Maritime Nation. What fun it could have been!

Back to my theme: no likely change as we wake up on 30th March. And that will be true whether we have a 'no-deal' exit, or Mrs May somehow gets her negotiated deal passed with a slender majority, or she secures an extension to the exit date, or if there is a vote in Parliament that revokes Article 50 (our intention to leave the EU) and keeps us all inside the EU.

Of more interest are the seismic shifts and regroupings going on within the main political parties, and what effect those may have on the national decision-making processes. Again, no immediate effects. But if the government falls - or throws in its hand - and there is a summer General Election, the outcome is terribly hard to predict, apart from diminished Labour and Conservative parties and a lot more fragmentation.

In all of this, from beginning to end, there is the feeling that the bulk of us - 65 million people - are not going to be meaningfully consulted except in strictly-controlled ways that narrow our expression down to simplistic, carefully-formulated responses. Such as: voting for one or other party, but not being allowed to say exactly why, nor on what conditions one's vote may be counted. Such as: voting on a stark referendum question, without being able to give it any nuance.

I wonder why it isn't possible to just vote online, ticking not only the box for the candidate/party of one's choice, but also a series of 'opinion boxes' to indicate the direction one would like the winning party to take.

Indeed, why isn't this possible at all times, not just at elections, so that those in charge get continuous direct input from (potentially) the entire general public? And that constantly-changing expression of millions of interested persons could be studied in a website online, for all to see. If properly managed, a much more accurate measure of general opinion than any street poll, I reckon. And if a government wanted to make assertions about 'what the British public wants' it ought to base them on whatever this website reveals. We will all then be able to spot when a government is doing something that is against the weight of public opinion.

Well, I'm off to bonny Scotland first thing in April. It'll be very interesting to see how things shape up there, Scotland (when I last heard) being all against leaving the EU, but being dragged out along with the rest of the UK (which naturally wouldn't happen if Scotland were already independent). I expect to hear some heated remarks being expressed wherever I go. Mind you, I will be discreet, and will avoid discussing political matters with anyone. Safety first.

I'm rather glad that my car sports a Scottish number-plate and won't stand out.