After over three years of chaotic and often bad-tempered negotiations to leave the EU – part one of Britain’s bitter separation becomes a reality in just two weeks.
The vast majority of the British public had no idea just how powerful Britain was as a member of the EU. First of all, we should not forget that the EU is a modern-day empire. It is a bloc of 520 million people in 28 countries organised from a political hub that Britain was at the centre of.
It was Welshman Roy Jenkins, who rose to become European Commission president in 1977, and Arthur Cockfield, the U.K.’s commissioner from 1985, who were architects of the monetary union and the single market, respectively. It was the U.K.’s rebellious nature combined with its long free-trade instincts that guaranteed the bloc wasn’t taken over by the isolationists and nationalists.
Yes, it was Britain who helped design and create the very institution it now seeks to tear apart.
It’s ironic is it not that throughout its membership, Britain served as a substantial counterbalance to the competing powers of France and Germany. Germany is now at the beginning of a recessionary cycle and is soon to lose its tenacious and forceful leader in Angela Merkel to a much weaker model of authority. France’s president Macron is attempting to take the lead role in Europe but has many domestic issues and France does not have the gravitas and poise of Britain’s once-famous diplomatic skill sets. If Britain had chosen to stay a member, by now it would be the nation leading it. A new empire staring up at a country with a long history of being stable in an uncertain world.
But what now? Sajid Javid, Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer has just told the Financial Times the UK would not be a “rule-taker” after Brexit, urging businesses to “adjust”. The chancellor said the Treasury would not support manufacturers that favour staying aligned with EU rules, as companies had known since 2016 that the UK was going to leave the EU.
But what terms were they? We still don’t know and won’t for some time to come.
With the new Johnson majority, Javid is now saying something that simply could not be said before – that some companies, no matter how big or structurally important to the UK will suffer because of Brexit.
The chancellor also said in the same interview he wanted to double the UK’s annual economic growth to between 2.7 and 2.8% – just as the economy is flatling and without saying how.
As a direct result of the 2016 EU referendum, Britain’s economy is now 3 per cent smaller. The latest research finds, even accounting for the weaker global economy, Britain’s competitor’s and by international standards, Britain will have lost £200billion in economic activity by the end of this year. In little over four years, the ideology of Brexit will have cost more than the combined financial contribution it made to the EU in 47 years of membership.
And while senior government ministers have been quietly threatening business leaders to not express their negative views on Brexit – a position that is unlawful for business leaders in public companies, these very business leaders have finally lost their collective tempers with forceful resentment and publicly reacted.
The aerospace, automotive, chemicals, food and drink and pharmaceutical sectors have now jointly warned that this government and its economic policies aimed at Brexit could pose “serious risk to manufacturing competitiveness”. Together, these sectors employ 1.1 million people, contributing £98bn to the UK economy each year. And yet, the government appears emboldened enough to treat them exactly the same as Britain did the coal and steel industry. There’s a reason. Before the news came to be public knowledge that the government would shift its political and economic position after the election, government policy was being reshaped for a post-Brexit world.
As is further proof is needed as to the economic realities approaching Britain, one only has to listen to eurosceptic Prof. Patrick Minford. He was a notable defender of Margeret Thatcher’s economic policies, was given an OBE by the Tory government in the late 1990s and is a notable member of the Economists for Brexit group which advocated the UK leaving the European Union. Minford genuinely believes that Brexit could substantially increase Britain’s GDP (by 6.8%).
In a recent meeting with government ministers, Minford confirms a new reality and these are his very words (watch Minford HERE):
“It’s perfectly true that if you remove protection of the sort that has been given, for instance, to the car industries, you are going to have a change in the situation facing that industry – and you are going to have to run it down. And it will be in your interests to do so in just the same way as you ran down the coal industry and the steel industry. These things happen. You have to deal with the compensation problems along the route. It will be a process that can’t be entertained without compensation. Reform always requires compensation.”
This is what the aerospace, automotive, chemicals, food and drink and pharmaceutical sectors have suddenly started warning about. They understand that their future in Britain is no longer assured. British industry wrote to the government as a collective in an attempt to be heard. Their worries are primarily about ‘regulatory alignment’ with the EU.
“Pan-European regulatory alignment has been a success in our industries, supporting continued creation and retention of highly skilled manufacturing jobs in the UK. It is important this regulatory alignment should continue after Brexit as a critical element of the UK’s future relationship with the EU”.
The government have just confirmed that ‘regulatory alignment’ has been sacrificed on the altar of the free-market. Minford believes that whilst these industries will be the sacrificed, design, marketing and hi-tech will benefit.
It should be noted that Prof Minford fully supported Thatchers Community Charge (Poll Tax) reforms that led directly to the Poll Tax riots and Conservative ministers to oust her in 1990. The Poll Tax was then abolished because of its economic failure and the political meltdown it caused.
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Featured image is from TP
