Whatever the outcome of the EU Referendum tomorrow, the world is likely to continue turning on its axis come Friday. The real test will be how the UK looks in the future. Two of our superb EYE writers look into the crystal ball and imagine life from a 20-year perspective.  

First, Marc Shoffman on life after a Remain vote:

It’s been 20 years since the Remain campaign edged to victory in the EU referendum, giving the economy a boost and maintaining the status quo of rising house prices.

Two decades on and England is reeling from yet another exit on penalties from Euro 2036 and still longing for the glory years of 1966, 80 years ago.

The Conservative Party is still licking its wounds after Eurosceptics broke off into a splinter group led by Boris Johnson and Michael Gove with the intent of ousting then Prime Minister David Cameron.

Cameron attempted to placate the xenophobia on the right of the party by introducing charges for non-UK citizens visiting museums. This helped fund the arts but was one of few policies he could get through.

His opponents spent month after month defeating government policy in the Commons, helping Labour secure a landslide victory in 2020.

But Prime Minister Corbyn didn’t last long as his plans to ban all second home ownership and cap rents based on the retail prices index alienated voters and led to house prices increasing as buy-to-let investors refused to sell up, hitting supply and pushing prices up. This opened the way for David Miliband to return and lead the Labour party based on the aspiration and social values that his brother had failed to do.

Many UK residents have already flocked from the capital where rising prices and the failure of the extra Stamp Duty charges led to average prices hitting £1m.

Some first-time buyers moved to the northern powerhouse areas of Liverpool and Manchester where the eventual completion of Crossrail had opened up the UK to investment away from the capital where property prices were lower, but still bordered the £500,000 mark.

Others had become so fed up with the lack of access to affordable property that they trained as builders and teamed with hard-working Eastern Europeans to create a self-build industry. This reduced the number of people going to university as the younger generation opted to learn a trade instead to compete and work with migrants.

This hit the pockets of several higher education institutions that had become greedy on tuition fees. Several closed, freeing up land for residential property development. Former students were given priority to buy and build on this land.

Many home movers used compensation from the mis-selling scandal that came out of the Help to Buy equity loan scheme as banks and developers were found by the Financial Conduct Authority to have failed to disclose that buyers would need to repay the government loan at the end of five years.

Developers were ordered to fund compensation with the banks and by way of apology get on with building homes on land freed up by the closure of TV studios and newspapers as terrestrial viewing had plunged and the main sources of news and entertainment content were through vlogs and Netflix.

Newspapers still existed but only in co-working spaces with travel agents and banks.

This helped first-time buyers get on the property ladder although the last few bank branches closed in 2025, meaning they had to apply for mortgages online. This slowed down applications as call centres had been outsourced to Poland.

The constant online transactions made buyers long for human contact, boosting high street estate agents.

Many Leave voters discovered the continent isn’t actually that bad and that they can benefit from freedom of movement to retire in hotter places such as Spain and Italy. A stronger pound off the back of the Remain vote also helped them pick up a bargain. But they still don’t think it was right to stay in the EU, despite the cheaper Sangria.