The Guardian - Back to home
Even now, Boris Johnson must know that no-deal Brexit is madness
We have seen external shocks and misguided policies push Britain into crisis before. But never willed self-harm like this
Sun 28 Jul 2019 02.00 EDT
Some believe Johnson may still be a Remainer at heart. Photograph: Reuters
Treasury officials have not been the flavour of the year with a government apparently dead set on heading for the Brexit cliff. Why? Because they have been warning of the catastrophic consequences of “no deal” – not to say of the somewhat less catastrophic consequences of any Brexit deal – hard, soft or in-between.
Recently, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) has added to the warnings. Even on the International Monetary Fund’s “less pessimistic” no-deal Brexit scenario, the OBR sees damaging consequences for household incomes, the public finances and the pound.
In which latter context, it is worth emphasising that the uncertainty that followed the referendum – and the huge hit to business confidence – has meant that the traditional boost to investment and exports (and import saving) from a devaluation has been conspicuous by its absence. The trade balance is terrible. The collapse of confidence in the pound has been bad news for most of us.
The plain fact of the matter is that Brexit is crazy and our latest prime minister must know it.
Now, while he was in the course of losing the race against Johnson, Jeremy Hunt was foolish enough to move to the ultra-right, no-deal fringe and complain that “the EU has deliberately chosen to make the UK poorer”.
Sorry? Who has chosen to make the UK poorer? Not the famous 17 million who voted Leave in the referendum without being informed of the consequences, let alone the lies. No, it is the Conservative party, under the leadership first of Theresa May, and now of Alexander Johnson. This once-great party subscribes to a policy of self-harm for the economy while fantasising about arranging a handful of trade deals that would in no way compensate for the (70) perfectly satisfactory trade deals we already have with, or via, the EU and which would be sacrificed by heading for the 31 October cliff.
There have been times when mistaken economic policies have harmed our economy – the sado-monetarism of the early 1980s, and the Osborne austerity programme since 2010. There have been times when “events” have caused serious disruption – the second world war and its aftermath necessitated an austerity programme until the wartime economy adjusted to peacetime; and the oil-shock of 1973-74, when oil prices rose fivefold, was what economists call an “external shock”. It aggravated the British economy’s inflationary tendencies, leading to the collapse of the Heath Conservative government of 1970-74 and the Wilson-Callaghan Labour government of 1974-79.
But deliberately choosing to cause harm to the economy and society is something else. And that is what is coming unless the country has a chance to think again, the only feasible route being another referendum – the second or third, depending how you score the 1975 referendum which confirmed our original membership.
There is no shortage of speculation about what Johnson and his cohorts are up to – and I did not get where I am today by trying to read politicians’ minds. There are those who say that Johnson is at heart a Remainer, and is going through the motions of pretending to believe in Brexit until it becomes obvious that it is nonsense and normal service can be resumed. But perhaps he really is deluded and believes that a period of “optimism” – after the period of low spirits, even depression, fomented largely by him and his Brexit like – can work miracles.
There is only one macroeconomic sphere in which I agree with him. After a long period of needless austerity, the economy needs more expansionary, Keynesian policies. However, focusing tax cuts on the rich is not the right way to cure the many ills of contemporary society.
----------------------------------------------------------------------My Comments :
1. The apparent premise by many Remainer and moderate Brexiteer alike, that Johnson - with his monomaniac pursue for a hard no-deal Brexit - would be acting on the base of (expected) economic prosperity (at least in the middle-long term) for the UK through Brexit, is totally beyond any truth and reality (*).
2. Just as it - by the way - would be a nonsense in itself, to suppose (expect / project) any massive additional long term prosperity for the UK would be the main spin-off from any Brexit manoeuvre (whatever degree).
3. After all, the underlying motivation for Brexit by the semi-fascist forces - that took over the UK since the brutal Regime Change that has been imposed on the UK people by the recent inauguration of King Boris and his extreme-right cabinet - is explicite neo-NATIONALISM.
4. More specifically : Together with notoriously anti-democratic notions as White Supremacism and Charismatic Leadership (**), Nationalism is the core motive behind the Brexit project.
5. That is why the restoration of UK BORDERS is so paramount to the newly formed extreme-right Conservative government (including Rees-Mogg from the hard-tight ERG) and that is why this new ultra-Conservative government is so hyper-obsessed with (removing) the Back-stop formula, (notably negotiated on the initiative of the UK) on behalve of Ireland (and the preservation of the integrity of the entire EU concept).
6. But do by all means remember as well, that the newly to be re-established, heavy accent on national borders, will bring the UK necessarily nearer to future border conflicts, and border conflicts do have a historic tendency to escalate into wholesale wars.
7. That very fact by the way - illustrated by two major highly genocidal European wars in the first half of the 20th century alone - has been one of the main rationales behind starting the (now) EU project in the first place.
8. Another deep rooted desire of the extreme-right regime that has been established after the coronation of King Boris, (associate of kingmaker and Farage supporter Steve Bannon), is the total removal of the UK subjects from the protection of international treaties (and from the international bodies that do support those treaties), that are responsible for all kinds of internationally (to be vigorously upheld) European until Universal Rights, varying from equal European Rights (of all sorts) till the famous All Men are Equal declaration.
9. The rejection by fascist regimes (like the USA Trump and the UK Johnson regimes), of Science as the main base for interpreting natural phenomena is another characteristic of the new fascist and racist Kingdom of Boris, because (for example) the highly disturbing AGW notion - carefully underpinned by lots of huge, scientific research projects, coordinated by the famous UN IPCC body - does not exactly correspond with the ruthless commercial exploitation of all (remaining) UK resources, that king Boris and his Court are desperately opting for..
10. So if anyone in the UK, opposed to the dangerously radical Brexit perception of king Boris et al. has any aspiration of resisting a cliff-edge Brexit, I would recommend to start organising this resistance right now and not to wait for instance, for the uncertain outcome of the probably a lot less effective endeavour in this respect, of the few Conservatives and Labour plotters like Hammond and Starmer during this summer recess.
(*) For reasons well-known by now, such as the total absence of any UK clout during the renegotiation of new commercial treaties with the big economic blocs of this world, to mention just one principle example.
(**) Do remember in this respect the rather revealing fact, that king Boris did refuse to rule out the prorogation of Parliament in order to realise a no-deal Brexit....
Geen opmerkingen:
Een reactie posten
Opmerking: Alleen leden van deze blog kunnen een reactie posten.