BRITAIN rejoined the European Union fully in 2029, adopting the euro as our currency. Currently we pay €20million a month into the EU as our membership fee and get nothing out of it. The European Commission continues to issue a constant stream of directives, mostly aimed at damaging Britain. Parliament rubber stamps and gold plates them while the rest of Europe ignores them just like it did before Brexit in 2016.

Prime Minister Ed Miliband has just announced that, effective January 1 2047, the official religion of Britain will be Islam. The Church of England, under its new Archbishop of Canterbury, a trans woman, expressed sadness. Vicars and rectors across the country are administering an average of six parishes and at Sunday services find themselves preaching to congregations of four or so elderly women. When these congregations die off, churches are left to fall into disrepair or are converted into mosques.

The banks, strangers to customer service, finally achieved their ambition to abolish the use of cash in 2033. Credit and debit cards are still in (declining) use but are discouraged by huge transaction fees and punitive interest on uncleared balances. Almost all payments and transactions must now be done with smartphones. The police, the government and many other official authorities can access them all at any time thereby monitoring everything we do. Facial recognition cameras everywhere greatly enhance this capability.

High streets all around the country are almost completely boarded up as retail outlets were hit with crippling business rates, taxes (with VAT now 25 per cent), red tape and exorbitant parking charges. Most shopping is done online with Amazon and Tesco, with deliveries by drones and illegal immigrants on e-bikes.

HS2, by then £70billion over budget, was abandoned in 2036 12 miles short of Birmingham, when it was calculated that there would not be enough electricity to run the trains. Transport Minister Winifred Olutoye, who did not hold a driving licence, said the project had been put on hold until sufficient additional renewable electricity could be provided. The head of HS2 Ltd said the minister’s statement was inaccurate because millions of euros a month would have to be spent on care and maintenance of the existing track and there was no budget allocation for this.

The last pub in Britain, the Jawbone Tavern in Bootle, Merseyside, closed in 2036. The reasons cited by the owner were intolerable business rates, rocketing alcohol duties and, of course, reels of red tape from the EU.

Read More – Dateline 2046: The state we’ll be in