Hello, my name is David Ronserman and this is Talking Politics. Today, Helen Thompson and I are talking with Diane Coil and Ann Menon about the long term consequences of Brexit for the economy and for politics.

Talking Politics is brought to you in partnership with the London Reviewer Books. If you enjoy listening to Talking Politics, you'll definitely enjoy reading the LRB.

That's why they publish a reading list of relevant writing from the archive to a company every episode on lrb.co.uk and also why you, Talking Politics listeners, are invited to subscribe for just £1 issue.

via the URL lrb.me slash talk. That's lrb.me slash talk. Talking Politics in partnership with the London Reviewer Books.

Helen I recorded two conversations, so this is coming in two parts, first Diane on the economics and then Ann and on the politics we've spoken to them both quite often in the past and Helen and I discussed some of these questions last week.

But this is a chance to really try and take the long view, starting with the question about what the trade deal actually means.

Diane, just to start with a pretty basic question, where are you on the idea that this bright, shiny Brexit future and the trading arrangement that we have with the EU now is in the Prime Minister's words relatively frictionless.

Last but not least, laughing with astonishment that anybody could seriously make that claim is where I am with that.

The idea that this is frictionless is absurd. We're talking amongst ourselves now as shops in Northern Ireland are running out of goods.

The increase in the costs of trade with the EU are much increased and going to stay there because for ever now people exporting to the EU from Britain or importing to us from the EU will have a lot of forms to fill out extra checks.

Companies are having to pay for licenses to have their goods certified for sale. The idea that this is frictionless is totally absurd.

And when do you think it will be felt that there's obviously this issue at the moment that it's quite hard to maybe easier for you.

It's quite hard for me to disaggregate COVID effects from Brexit effects.

I mean, as you say Northern Ireland things maybe are already being felt and Hannah and I talked about the ways in which Northern Ireland may be where these things are most visible but more broadly for the UK.

When and where do you think people will feel the friction?

We're in a situation now where there's less going on than usual, partly because of the holiday, the seasonality, partly because of COVID.

So people are going to be feeling the friction more and more, the closer things get back to anything like normal kinds of volumes.

These are permanent changes and it's not just trade with the EU actually, it's trade with other countries with which we formally had deals through the EU.

And those are all either one by one being renegotiated or still have to be negotiated.

So there are permanent frictions and the more people try to trade in and out of the country, the more they're going to hit the realization that this is what has happened and it's what's permanent.

Being able to explain what's due to Brexit and what's due to other things going on is a different matter because of course the people that people are just to constraints, they want to carry on running their businesses or importing goods so they'll get used to it.

And it would be quite hard to descend angle Brexit effects from COVID effects anyway, but compared to the counterfactual world in which we had not created these frictions for ourselves and trade, we are without question going to be worse off.

...