I found this blurb from The New York Times interesting, “For a start, Mr. Sunak has done little to alter his reputation as a cautious technocrat. Plans for the economy, unveiled in November, announced major spending cuts but delayed the bulk of them until 2025. Balancing between further immiserating the public and appeasing the markets whose ire brought Liz Truss’s premiership to such a dramatic end, it wasn’t a death blow to the nation’s economy. But it merely maintains a failing system. And the situation is dire. British households are in the midst of the biggest fall in living standards since the 1950s, yet Mr. Sunak seems to have little idea of how to reverse it. Vague promises to bring down inflation do little to bring actual improvement to people’s lives. Add a dubious effort to coax recent retirees back into work and plans to deregulate the City of London, some of which have already been abandoned, and the overall impression is of a leader both misfiring and weak.”
Obstenbily this article was about the failed first three months of P.M. Sunak’s tenure. Still, I could not help but read between the lines about some of the economic woes as a direct result of Brexit, although it was not mentioned directly in the article. I think Britons are starting to feel the long-term, permanent consequences of, you know, deciding to leave the world’s largest trading block at the time of Brexit: “The European Union (EU) is the world’s largest trading bloc and the second largest economy in the world” (2020). What could possibly go wrong? Add to that a pandemic and another European war, and the U.K. is left particularly vulnerable to economic vicissitudes that have created the worst economic backsliding in 70 years! But hey, at least they got to kick out all those foreigners, which has created labor shortages and out-of-control inflation because, you know, labor expenses are a primary input cost, which means everything costs more at every level of the production chain.
Oh, well. This is what people wanted! This is what people voted for during the Brexit referendum. People should have known. And there really is no excuse, as many suggest, arguing that the voters were “bamboozled” by false promises of a better funded NHS, more competitive trading, and, of course, more white people in the U.K. with fewer Eastern Europeans. (But for some reason, the U.K. loves their Russian oligarchs! Those Eastern European merchants of terrorism are welcomed!) How’s all that working out? Like in America, Putin manipulated and interfered in the political debate and Brexit vote, and he won! Too bad the U.K. can never go back; they’ll just continue to slip further into second-class world status. Elections have consequences! It’s a shame that voters are the last ones to understand this before they cast their ballot, or worse still — don’t!
