Government is better prepared for a zombie attack than for Brexit

Yes, really.

So first, the good news. Zombie attack? It’s been thought about and the level of zombie attack preparations is rather reassuring:

In the event of an apocalypse brought about by an army of the undead, civil servants would co-ordinate the military’s efforts to “return England to its pre-attack glory”, according to a Freedom of Information request that has revealed the country’s contingency plans.

The MoD would not lead efforts to plan for such a zombie attack or deal with the aftermath because that role rests with the Cabinet Office, which co-ordinates emergency planning for the Government.

Details about the authorities’ surprising level of readiness for a zombie onslaught emerged in a response to an inquiry from a member of the public.

And now, the not so good news: Brexit preparations.

You might think Brexit more likely than incoming zombies. I might think that. We all might think that.

But the government isn’t quite behaving that way:

On Wednesday morning, Brexit Secretary David Davis told the select committee on exiting the European Union that the government had not produced “impact asessments” on how Brexit will affect different parts of the UK economy. He also admitted that the predictive model his department is using to predict what will happen is not a “formal quantitative one”.

Which is strange, given the number of times he, his fellow ministers and government spokespeople have talked about the in-depth analysis being carried out, and the effort they went to to avoid publishing that information earlier this year because it might supposedly undermine negotiations with the EU.

Perhaps therefore it isn’t a surprise that Brexit voters are getting increasingly pessimistic about how Brexit will turn out or that more voters are now backing the idea of a referendum on the terms of any Brexit deal.

It’s not just zombies

David Davis’s track record on Brexit preparations