In my last column I suggested that Brexit is the biggest act of self-harm inflicted on the British economy since returning to the gold standard in 1925. Even Archbishop Jacob Rees-Mogg has recently admitted that the implementation of the next stage of the bureaucracy associated with Brexit would be an “act of self-harm.” I didn’t invent that.
As Brexit Minister of Opportunity, he has the task of looking for these opportunities. One of the few reports that has been raised is the possibility of abandoning EU rules on the manufacture of vacuum cleaners, making them more powerful and less environmentally friendly. I didn’t invent it either.
Why does the cartoon’s favorite character, Lord Snooty, have such problems? The answer is looking at him and the British business side: Brexit is proving a total disaster and has a severely detrimental impact on the economy. It is exacerbating the problem of inflation and having such a drastic impact on production and, therefore, on living standards, that the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development predicts that the UK will be next year. ‘G20 worst performing economy apart from, eh, Russia.
Our terrible Prime Minister – still in his place at the time of writing – talks about growth and investment. But the truth is that investment has collapsed with Brexit, an evolution that is hardly a sign of growth.
As the saying goes, “those who want to destroy the gods go mad first.” When the Conservative chairman of the House of Commons Committee, Tobias Ellwood, recently pointed out that the answer to the reparation for the economic damage inflicted on the UK, as well as the insoluble problem of the Northern Ireland Protocol, would be to unite in the single market, he was criticized by his fellow Conservative MPs. And the Labor Party is being very bold in refusing to address the Brexit issue directly.
At no point, despite all her frustrations with the EU and her many battles (which she won!), Did Mrs. Thatcher ever want to leave the EU.
The Brexit brigade, and those who are afraid of them, have to put into their minds something that Lord (Charles) Powell, Margaret Thatcher’s closest adviser for many years, reminded his audience at a meeting last week of the Wimbledon Philosophical Society.
He said that at no time, despite all his frustrations with the EU and his many battles (which he won!), Thatcher never wanted to leave the EU. Unfortunately, his so-called Eurosceptic disciples misinterpreted or distorted his opposition to the EU’s centripetal tendencies. They were too naive to appreciate that, after a combination of the work of Thatcher herself and Prime Ministers John Major and Gordon Brown (especially when the latter was Chancellor), the United Kingdom enjoyed, in the words of George Soros, “the best of both. ” worlds ”in their membership of the EU.
Unfortunately, the Brexiters managed, with a certain degree of call, to deceive a narrow majority of those who voted in that fateful referendum to choose to leave.
Now, back to the gold standard in 1925. The economic importance of this was that it involved a gross overvaluation of the pound and had a drastic impact on our exports and production, thus aggravating the unemployment crisis of the 1920s. It was a decision that Winston Churchill, the Conservative Chancellor in 1925, regretted for the rest of his life. However, it was of no use to the fortunes of Ramsay MacDonald’s Labor government of 1929-31.
But, but, but … it was reversible. Events in the foreign exchange market forced the United Kingdom to abandon the gold standard in 1931, under what was then the National Government. Labor politician Sidney Webb later said: “No one told us we could do this.”
Brexit is also reversible. It is not good for Lord Mandelson to advise the Labor Party that its effects can be “mitigated”; or believing that Labor, if elected, can “make Brexit work”. Brexit doesn’t work, and it’s not obvious that it can ever work.
Commentators continue to wonder: what is the work plan? Well, I can offer a plan: the worker should grab the ball and run towards an open goal. The damage that Brexit is causing to this clueless country should be highlighted every day, and the reasons why: the conservatives of Brexit! (This damage is manifested, among other things, in the recent fall of the pound. There is a difference between the detrimental effects of an overvaluation of a currency, in 1925, and a fall like the current one, which impoverishes the nation). .)
Labor’s approach to Brexit seems to be, in Suetoni’s words, “slowly rushing” (“festina lente”) towards an approach to the EU. In my opinion, it should accelerate quickly, while Johnson’s reputation, like the bankruptcy of Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, is broken “in two ways: gradually, then suddenly.”