I think the effects are being massively overblown by people with political agendas and the actual man on the street will see little change outside some additional paperwork when going abroad. Unless you're Irish then it could be bad.
The UK is a major trading partner of many EU countries, especially in the financial sectors where somewhere in the region of £1.3 trillion is based here in investment. The EU is a major trading partner of the UK and accounts for somewhere in the region of 44% of exports going into the EU give or take a very generous 4% for the Rotterdam effect. There's this narrative presented where either the EU has this crushingly great hand in negotiations and we have to beg them which is completely as false as the narrative that the absurdly positive Blighty Can Make It! with some remnant of Blitz spirit. This is a divorce and it will be simultaneously painful and create new opportunity for all involved to some degree.
Both sides are rational actors and will come to a mutually beneficial agreement. Economics runs the world, be in no doubt about that, and economics demands stability above all else. You can't on the one hand believe that politicians are controlled by corporate interests then on the other hand suggest that politicians won't do what is best for corporate interests. That's talking out of both sides of your mouth.
There's some potential benefits to Brexit. It's no secret that over the next 25 years the economic growth in the world is going to mainly be focused in developing economies such as India, China, the Mid East and parts of Africa - that's really where the money is going to be. Being outside of a trading union gives us the ability to strike more specific and quite frankly quicker deals than being inside it which will be better for us in the long term. In addition, nobody sensible is suggesting that we just stop all immigration and that's one of the freak out lots myths. Instead we can control immigration based on need and skillset which is ultimately the best of both worlds and exactly how every single non-EU country in the world handles it and manages to do so without the downfall of Western civilisation.
On the other side, the EU will want us to continue our commitments to them until at least the end of the current EU budget which is somewhere between £20bn and £60bn depending on who you believe (and the EU is keeping silent on it). That seems fair enough to me and something we'll probably acquiesce to in negotiations - the money is essentially already budgeted in both the EU and the UK mid range budgets and we did agree to do so. This however means we'll be paying into a trading union that we're not a part of which will be a difficult sell to the public at a time where the NHS is struggling so much. Both sides will want current citizens to not be affected and I imagine there would be a citizenship amnesty of some sort where Brits abroad or Europeans here will be given a fast track system. Again - both sides here are rational actors and not insane people who are rabidly biased so it seems an easy enough trade point.
Obviously without the EU we won't get access to the single market but many have argued this is a good thing as it allows us to cut bureaucracy in different sectors that aren't really applicable to the UK economy. The single market are the internal trade rules of the EU and don't apply to external products or deals. So the UK won't have to do adhere to rules that are designed to keep French dairy farmers competitive, for example. However the flip side to this is that manufacturers might be not fancy making "EU version" and "UK version" of their products if we have different rules so costs will go up. Realistically, we'll probably continue to mirror the rules of the single market for products that will benefit from it and change them for products that won't. Also realistically, there's no way we could stay in the single market because it's implied to be part of EU membership. I imagine we'll ask but give up on it fairly easily because even we're not stupid enough to believe that a members only club will continue to give us membership benefits without us paying membership fees. We'll probably keep access until the end of the EU budget then that will be it.
Access to the customs union is a complicated one. The customs union is the external part of the single market - essentially the rules that the EU put on imports into it from countries not in the EU. This is the one that we want to be a part of because otherwise all British goods would have a tariff on them and there's already precedent for non-EU countries being a member of the customs union, Turkey for example had an agreement which extended it to them all the way back in 1995. The Tories have said that they intend to exit the Customs Union and Labour have said that they intend to fight them every step of the way on this. Mainly because Labour seems to think that Northern Ireland will become a large smuggling area due to its EU border and the Tories seem to think that us being forced to charge tariffs on other countries to trade with us outside our negotiation is stupid in a non-EU Britain, at least as far as I can tell, the political parties are all over the place here. There's no real way to predict how this will fall, I imagine we'll push for a free trade area where we have tariffless access to the customs union and aren't bound by the common tariff on external goods. The EU will want to push us into the single market for access to this, which includes free movement of people so won't be accepted. I imagine we'll probably have some patchwork agreement where nobody really gets what they want and it doesn't really work for anybody because lines are drawn in the sand on this one. The threat of cutting London off from the EU and setting up a tax haven off the coast of the EU was not an idle threat and I genuinely believe the Tories can and will do this to keep London strong if necessary. On the other hand we'll be asking for a spectacularly biased deal that no country in the history of the EU or EC has ever gotten which would make France and some other nations eye up the prospect of leaving. Creating a whole new Free Trade Area between the UK and EU seems to be the minority consensus on where this is going rather than joining the currently existing European free Trade Area which Norway and Switzerland are in. It makes sense for both - we are not Norway or Switzerland, we're one of the largest economies on the planet and in fact have a larger economy than every non-EU member of the EFTA put together.
A big issue is Ireland. Both the British and the Irish would want Republic of Ireland to remain in the Common Travel Area which allows free movement of people between Republic and Northern Ireland. The problem, and this is one of things that points to some of the validity of the Leave arguments over sovereignty, is that it's not the Republic's choice to make. They can't negotiate that deal with the UK about whether their citizens are allowed in NI and vice versa, only the EU can and it would have to apply to the entire EU which the UK would never agree to in a billion years. How a hard border will affect both countries and really minute detail such as recruitment in jobs or skills is presently unknown but it's not going to be a good thing. We'll ask for special exemptions on this and we'll probably lose because the EU will ask for free movement of labour in return. I just can't see a way which the EU would grant "a bit of free movement".
The main thing to remember is that most of this is academic. A vast majority of the economic models that predicted a failing economic and slowed growth after a Leave vote were inaccurate and it's not surprising. Models of anything are only as good as the data going into them and nothing like this has ever happened before for them to really have any accurate data to build upon.
I think, somewhat controversially it appears, that everything will be fine for most people and they'll barely notice the difference. I would have preferred us to Remain as it leans towards my political utopia of a federalist world government, but the gaslighting that goes on towards the Leave campaign and voters is literally ridiculous.
