When recently asked on the Today television program to cite chapter and verse on the subject of Brexit “opportunities” Michael Gove, the British secretary of state for all seasons, was hopelessly out of his depth.
However, Gove missed a trick. What he should have said, but as a signed-up Brexiter obviously could not, was that the only “opportunity” arising from Brexit was to conduct a scientific experiment to demonstrate that the whole idea was a mistake.
Moreover, it was a confidence trick on the British public, the majority of whom realize that they have been had.
As business and industry struggle with the consequences of imposing sanctions on our ability to trade with our largest market, and citizens — known to economists as “consumers” — struggle with the higher import prices imposed by the devaluation resulting from Brexit, the polls are pronouncing people’s verdict on Brexit with a vengeance.
A YouGov poll tells us that 56 percent of people think it was wrong for the UK to leave the EU, and only 32 percent that it was the correct decision. About 19 percent of those who own up to having voted “leave” think they were wrong to do so.
The only age group containing a majority still in favor of Brexit is the over-65s. I have to say they are not among the over-65s I cross paths with, but there it is, and 88 percent of those who voted for the Labour Party in 2019 think “leave” was the wrong decision.
It is obvious that the more intelligent members of the British Cabinet have received the message from the Confederation of British Industry and elsewhere that the UK needs, for the sake of its economy and general welfare, to rejoin the single market.
However, this is the love that dare not speak its name, even though it appears that attitudes toward immigration — free movement! — have changed since 2016, when the egregious former British prime minister Boris Johnson, himself of Turkish ancestry, fomented anti-immigrant sentiment with nonsense about an imminent flood of Turkish immigrants.
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has picked up the message that the combination of Brexit and the chaos in his Conservative Party has led foreign observers to conclude that Britain is sinking fast.
Of the group of 20 leading economies, only Russia is performing worse than the UK, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
Yes, the UK was known as the “sick man of Europe” until it joined the EU and — guess what — it has left the EU and regained that dubious status.
Membership of the EU did great things for this country. Governments under the Labour and Conservative parties fought their corner and, on the whole, got what they wanted. Former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher and her right-hand negotiator, Lord Cockfield, played a blinder in the setting up of the single market, and her successor, John Major, achieved wonders at Maastricht with the UK’s opt-out from the single currency.
As for right-wing concerns about an “ever closer” union, they were duly assuaged. In essence, what those all too influential leavers achieved was a wholly unnecessary Brexit that shot the economy in the foot.
The Office for Budget Responsibility calculates the cumulative damage of Brexit is likely enough to knock 4 percent every year off the UK’s potential GDP.
“The need for tax rises [and] spending cuts wouldn’t be there if Brexit hadn’t reduced the economy’s potential output so much,” Bank of England monetary policy committee member Michael Saunders once said.
The Financial Times recently reported that many of the asset managers whom Sunak and British Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt were trying to pacify were concerned about the dangers of overdoing austerity!
It was a former British Treasury permanent secretary Lord Croham who once said to the historian Lord Hennessy and me: “What matters is not balancing the budget, but balancing the economy.”
Yet with the recent budget and the chancellor’s “shock and horror” talk, the UK seems to be back to the era of sado-monetarism — certainly a long way from balancing the economy.
The economist Jim Ball used to say he was suspicious of the OBE — not the Order of the British Empire, but the people who give you One Big Explanation.
For this government, the OBE for economic troubles was first COVID-19, then Ukraine. I am not saying Brexit is the cause of all our problems, but — my goodness! — it has magnified them. I would like to nominate Brexit as the One Big Explanation for why this economy is faring so much worse than in the rest of the G20.
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