I’ve noticed in recent years that when I travel in Europe, people ask me the same questions. “The British are used to being pragmatic, stable and reasonable,” I am often told in Spain, France and Germany. “what happened?”. The interrogation has become more intense in recent months. First, it was Boris Johnson resignation Then the long row over the election of a new Conservative Party leader, the surprise election of Liz Truss, 45 disastrous days as prime minister, her sudden resignation, Another rushed dispute over the leadership of the Conservatives, and last week, the appointment of Rishi Sunak. Sunak is the first person of Asian descent to hold the position of Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. (Something to be proud of) and a fifth Prime Minister in six years (maybe not much of that). I have no choice but to agree with my European friends: it is difficult to give a more convincing picture of a country that has gone from calm to political chaos in so short a time.
Five Prime Ministers since 2016. F. What will happen in the UK that year to cause all this turmoil? The answer is obviously Brexit, but we won’t hear many politicians admit it publicly, because the word itself is almost no longer part of British political language. This in itself is unusual. In 2016, When the British people narrowly agreed to the proposal to leave the European Union, The Brexiteers couldn’t contain their jubilation. Liberation Day, called it Nigel Farage. Shouldn’t they, six years later, continue to present it as one of the Tory government’s greatest victories and as a daily reminder of the great victory we have won and the tremendous liberties we have gained? Well, no, everyone is silent on this issue. The event that was in 2016 is hardly a historical event in 2022.
Perhaps this is because politicians from both major parties – and journalists – are grumbling about how much the benefits of Brexit were exaggerated during the referendum campaign. David Davis, one of the MPs who advocated leaving the European Union, said this prediction: “Brexit will have no flaws. Everything will be very positive.” An example of the absolutist rhetoric used by supporters of Brexit; Now it is clear that he was wrong. To take just two examples, UK exports of goods and services fell by about 12% between 2017 and 2021, and The London School of Economics calculated The number of trade exchanges between UK and EU firms fell by a third in the first six months after the agreement signed by Boris Johnson came into force.
Indeed, the radical political decision presented in 2016 as the path to greater prosperity only made matters worse. But acknowledging this requires facing some facts about the British economy and going back to the 1980s and Margaret Thatcher’s government. Thatcher decided to reduce the industrial capacity of the United Kingdom and turn the financial services sector, based in the City of London, into the new engine of the British economy. Instead of being the world’s factory, we will be its bank. And for a while this allowed us to make a lot of money (although most of it stayed in London and the South). But when the global financial crisis hit in 2008, the UK found itself in a particularly vulnerable position.
In 2010, after elections without a clear winner, a coalition government was formed. New Conservative Treasury Secretary George Osborne He responded to the financial crisis with a program of severe spending cuts, which he tried to smooth with his famous statement: “We are all in this together.” However, it was clear that some people were more “in it” than others, and by 2016 there was no longer any doubt that the only thing his austerity policy created was a more unequal society: the assets of those at the top doubled while the situation was Increasingly worse for the poorest and most vulnerable. The Trussell Trust, which funds the largest network of food banks From the UK, he managed about 35 in 2010: in 2020, there were already 1,300. A shameful situation in one of the world’s richest countries in theory.
Therefore, in 2016, the British well understood that austerity did not help them. So an informal coalition of wealthy Eurosceptics and “drop-out” voters from northern cities decided to try a different solution to the UK’s economic problems: Brexit. The word carried a powerful emotional evocation of the mythical image of the United Kingdom as a proud and sovereign island nation, but this was not enough to convince most people. It also had to offer economic advantages, so its supporters had to sell a clear fantasy: that the end of frictionless trade with our closest and largest trading partner would boost economic growth. The moment the British political class accepted this contradiction, it abandoned all logic and succumbed to magical thinking, which keeps it imprisoned to this day.
Perhaps only one political figure was able to make this fiction sound convincing: Boris Johnson, With his populist talent for propaganda, Paradoxically, to say everything with a wink and a smile dragged his audience into voluntary complicity. It was Johnson who actually sold Brexit to the British during the referendum, and then persuaded them (afterwards Theresa May’s Failed Attempts) He can “get it” with his “largely done” deal.
But Johnson is gone, and drowned His cheerful disregard for the rules of the epidemic that his government had issued a decree. His deputy, Liz Truss, soon discovered that what citizens expect after Brexit, They were not drawn to the stark and obvious neoliberalism, Someone imposed it without the magic of his predecessor. gears Elected by Conservative Party members, a small portion (180,000 people) and largely unrepresentative of the British population, so instead of returning to confidence in such an unreliable group, Conservative MPs hastened to make their own decisions. So the UK has a third prime minister in 2022: Rishi Sunak, an untested character yet, who was in Parliament for only seven years.
Sunak comes from the same culture International banking that Thatcher inflated. He comes from the right of his party and takes a radical stance on the culture wars and immigration. His wife is said to be richer than the late Queen Elizabeth II. But there’s a lot we don’t know about him, including his stance on the crucial issue of British politics, and this is the great paradox of Brexit: Something that has been presented to the British people as a panacea for the economy is already doing serious damage. If the new prime minister wants to survive at least a few months longer than the previous one, he has to start dealing with this reality.
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