UK voters suffer Brexit 'bregret'

A NEW poll to mark the third anniversary at the end of January 2023 of the UK leaving the EU has suggested most voters think voting for Brexit in the 2016 referendum was now a mistake. The term coined by observers to describe the change of heart is 'Bregret'.

The survey by Unherd and Focaldata asked voters across England, Scotland and Wales whether ‘Britain was wrong to leave the EU’ and in all but three of 632 constituencies, more people now agree than disagree.

As it happens, the three constituencies that are still in favour of having left – Boston & Skegness, South Holland & the Deepings, and Louth & Horncastle – are all in Lincolnshire, England’s second largest county which sprawls around the Wash.

In his recent book ‘Edge of England’ on this enigmatic area, author Derek Turner dubbed Lincolnshire ‘England’s forgotten county’. It was perhaps something of a prophetic insight and, having reviewed it for Central Bylines, it seems to me there are undoubtedly some answers lurking within its pages as to why this should be so.

Despite holding on to the number one anti-Europe spot though, the number of people in Boston & Skegness follows the survey’s national trend. Those expressing faith in Brexit have fallen from 75 percent at the time of the referendum in 2016 to 41 percent now, just four percentage points above those agreeing Britain was wrong to leave the EU.

In the past, one could say that by and large the UK was properly governed and MPs in the main were public servants. Indeed, leaving the EU was hardly in the minds of the British general public until it was elevated to the top of the political agenda by Prime Minister of the day, David Cameron at the beginning of 2016, for party political reasons.

In one way, it was a politically-naive way to silence a small but increasingly vocal anti-Europe brigade on the fringes of the Conservative party and in UKIP (United Kingdom Independence Party).

But it was also a handy smokescreen for those with vested interests who felt threatened by a soon-to-be-introduced EU Anti-Tax Avoidance Directive to control offshore tax havens, including questionable tax dealings by either those holding power or those wealthy enough to influence it. 

That would certainly would help explain a lot of things because at present many MPs, though not all, particularly those serving in the current cabinet and government, look like they are there to best their own personal influence and financial self-reward.

As the UK marks the third anniversary of having left the EU, it is not Brexit per se that has done the real damage but the incompetence and ignorance of politician after jingoistic politician who have proclaimed much but delivered nothing.

Figures released today (31 January) reveal the UK is the only leading economy likely to fall into recession this year, and this even behind Russia! The IMF forecasts that the UK economy will shrink 0.6 percent in 2023 as it is weighed down by the disadvantages of having left the European single market, combined with a toxic mix of sky high energy prices, rising mortgages and higher taxes.

It all adds up to a very bleak forecast for a vacuous government without a long term plan that pinned its hopes on ‘recovery’ and it leaves Rishi Sunak, the country’s third Tory prime minister in a year, mired in the sleaze and the false rhetoric of his predecessors, particularly Boris Johnson.

In the real world away from the Palace of Westminster, one business person after another describes Brexit and the form it has taken as an unmitigated disaster for the country.

One of them, entrepreneur and business leader Deborah Meaden, who regularly features on the TV programme ‘Dragon’s Den’, says: “Brexit is definitely a factor in 99 percent of businesses that I talk to. They are suffering, they’re bewildered.”

In the 2016 vote, Brexiteers got what they wanted. But despite the extensive promises, it hasn’t heralded a new dawn or a new age of prosperity for the country. Instead Brexit is costing the UK economy a million pounds per hour; it means the UK has around £20 billion a year less available for public spending; and it has lost around 330,000 workers from the UK economy.

After more than a dozen years of Conservative-controlled majority government, the country and its economy is in very poor shape. Promises are never going to be delivered, and the lies about the benefits of Brexit told during the referendum campaign and repeated ad nauseam since, only add to the image of deceitfulness at the very heart of this hard Brexit government.

Meanwhile, the government is preparing later this year to delete thousands of laws that largely benefit the ordinary people of this country, including the right to compensation for delayed trains or flights, the right to paid annual leave, equal pay and bank holidays, parental leave and pay and pension protection when a company goes bust.

These things won’t affect the super-wealthy but they will affect everyone else. Is it really what people voted for back in 2016? Probably not, given the results of the poll discussed at the beginning of this piece.

As the latest figures show, decline for the UK is now very real and continued Brexit denial will no longer cut it. Perhaps a corner is being turned at last as people finally realise what has been foisted on them?

Brexit doesn’t necessarily need to be undone wholesale but the country does need to rejoin the single market and customs union as soon as possible.

Such a dramatic reset to the country’s political direction and agenda might only be delivered in one of two ways – a General Strike that brings down the current government, or an unscheduled General Election after a vote of no confidence in which enough MPs decide to put the country and its future first for once. 

What is certain, however, is that the UK urgently, urgently needs mature, proper politicians who will put the interests of the people they represent first and, in doing so, pave the way for the country to rebuild and prosper.

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Editor's note: this article is an amended version of an opinion piece written for and published by Central Bylines. 

 

 

 

Breaking the Brexit taboo

FAR from blazing a path to new heights the British economy is well and truly in the doldrums with little sign of a fair wind whipping up to fan things back into life. Like Earth's climate it is on the edge of an avoidable catastrophe.

According to Will Hutton, economic journalist and commentator, the current British economic debate is therefore all the more bewildering, marooned as it is in a discourse in which one of the pivotal economic facts of 2022 is largely ignored.

Writing in The Observer newspaper (3 July 2022), he says the Chancellor and Governor of the Bank of England talk about the dangers of inflation, of the risk of a wage price spiral and the need for pay restraint – but never about the escalating sterling crisis and what lies behind it.

“But Brexit is not going away and it cannot be avoided,” he asserts, while reminding us that last week we learned that in the first three months of 2022 Britain’s current account deficit was the worst since records began in 1955.

It stood at a stunning 8.3 percent of GDP – the kind of deficit recorded by “banana republics before they collapse into slump, banking crises and hyperinflation”.

Hutton says the figures are so “terrifyingly bad” that even a shaken Office for National Statistics cautions that it is uncertain about the quality of its own data. 

“But the core reality cannot be dodged and revisions will impact only at the margins rather than reverse the story: real export volumes over the period are down 4.4 percent and import volumes up a gigantic 10.4 percent.”

Apologists point to exploding energy costs, statistical vagaries, the ongoing distortions of Covid, weak world markets and supply chain effects - all of which are playing their part.

“But what cannot be mentioned is Brexit and the obvious depressive impact it is having on UK exports and inward investment flows,” he writes.

"Britain is entering dangerous territory – the economy is falling into recession, investment is flat, while inflation, high across the industrialised world because of the fallout from the war in Ukraine, is highest in the UK largely because of the weak pound, which has no support from any quarter.

"The refusal of the Governor of the Bank of England, Andrew Bailey, even to acknowledge what is happening and why is beginning to be a source of lack of market confidence in itself.

“Without full access to the EU single market and customs union – the UK’s largest market – there is no possibility of an export recovery, nor a recovery in inward investment, nor a lifting of economic confidence,” says Hutton.

“As the Bank of America warns, Britain faces an existential sterling crisis, made worse because of the refusal of the government and many economic commentators to look the truth in the eye.”

Hutton cites the 1976 sterling crisis, triggered by the conviction of the foreign exchange markets that already very high inflation was certain to get out of hand, as an eerie parallel.

"There was nothing to prop up a falling pound, given the current account deficit was running at what seemed an unimaginable four precent of GDP – half today’s deficit," he says.

But one of the big differences between now and the 1970s is that back then the UK was embedded in a network of strong trading relationships. Having recently joined the Common Market, it could trade its way back to international creditworthiness with North Sea oil about to reinforce the impetus.

Hutton believes that Britain needs to be in the single market and customs union to have any prospect of price stability and growth. “It needs to be within the political architecture of Europe for its own security, given the dark menace of Russia,” he says.

“The British economic and political ship is foundering, damaged by the rock of Brexit; its captains need to be called out for their errant seamanship. A fundamental change of course is an imperative. The future political stars in both the Labour and Conservative parties are those with the courage to say so.”

Hutton also derided the Labour opposition for its “vows of silence”, a situation which Sir Keir Starmer began to remedy this week in the first of several speeches outlining future Labour policies.

Starmer’s Brexit 'policy' - essentially to “Make Brexit Work” by being more cooperative and less antagonistic towards Europe - is hardly brave or inspiring but it reflects a harsh political reality.

With a lawyer’s forensic mind, he knows the remotest hint about rejoining the single market or customs union would be a huge gift to the Tories and their right-wing media clients, who’d love nothing more than to fight the next election on Brexit once again.

The hard Brexit tide maybe turning in the minds of the public but, much to the chagrin of many ‘remainers’, Starmer has to play it cool for now at least.

Editor’s note: Will Hutton is a British journalist and was formerly editor-in-chief for The Observer, for which he now writes a regular column. He co-chairs the Purposeful Company, and is the president-designate of the Academy of Social Sciences. The full article, on which this commentary is based, is on this link
 

All the Prime Minister's Men

 

AS the UK’s political turmoil of December overflowed into January and continued unabated in February the contrast between UK prime minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson and leader of the opposition Sir Kier Starmer could not have been more stark.

On a rare trip into central London last week, it was amplified as I loitered outside the Houses of Parliament sipping a coffee from Neros just as the beleaguered prime minister was attempting to phrase his latest non-apology for “Party Gate”.

This time it was his response to the publication of an advance, short-form version of the infamous Sue Gray report into Downing Street parties during lockdown, and his response included the seemingly pre-meditated 'Jimmy Savile slur' against Starmer.

In any setting other than the UK Parliament, where historic gentlemanly privileges are still supposed to prevail, it would likely have amounted to a serious and legally actionable slander.

By all accounts, and from wall-to-wall TV coverage later, Johnson's was yet another painful performance for the head of any country, let alone one that also purports to be a "global leader".

Standing outside at the time I could almost hear the baying, the shouting, the laughing, and the utter disdain for MP’s in the House and for the public at large.

Less than a week later, events proved that this British Prime Minister does not routinely accept that he has ever done anything wrong and has no intention of ever really sorry at all.

His Savile comment was also a prime example of the so-called ‘dead cat’ tactic - in this case throwing out an outrageous smear in order to get everyone talking about that, and probably also knowing that some of it would ultimately stick.

And all this drama came hard on the heels of the second anniversary of Brexit when the government released its “Benefits of Brexit” document (which, unsurprisingly, struggled to string together any kind of list of advantages).

Shortly before heading back to the hotel, I was accosted on College Green which is just across from the Houses of Parliament. Thankfully not by a baying mob but by a “GB News” crew asking if I would do a piece to camera.

Am I a fan of GB News? Definutely not! It's mega-wealthy backers give it an unhealthy right wing editorial bias. But I agree and thought they might as well have it with both barrels.

So I stared into the camera and told them in no uncertain terms that Johnson was incapable of changing and, as a result, was probably toxic as both leader of the Tory party and the UK.

I described his vacuous “apology” as pathetic and rounded off the short interview with a resolute call for Johnson to resign. Not sure that it got broadcast but at least I said it.

Like everyone, over the years I have watched many movies, some more meaningful to my life at a particular the time than others.

One such film, back in the late 1970s, was the 'All The President’s Men' - the story of the Watergate cover up which led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon.

The drama of inside story by Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein proved the catalyst for my own journalistic career.

As reflected in the title of this blogpost, one can only hope that ultimately the lies and coverups of Johnson will be not only bring about his downfall but also those of his hand-picked cabinet and government ministers.

But, in terms of film endings, another that I still revere from back in the day is the scene at the end of the original 'Planet of the Apes'.

As the camera panned out on a washed up beach, the last human survivor (played by Charlton Heston) and his partner glance up to see the ruined Statue of Liberty before him and utters the film's closing, poignant words: “You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!”

Now, as the picture heading this post illustrates, some clever graphics person has re-purposed a still from the film that neatly transfers this to the immense damage Johnson and his Brexit cabal are doing to the UK, both in plain sight and behind closed doors.

And I thank my journalist colleague Rob Coppinger for the paraphrase for this version of the film's ending: “We finally did it! Brexit, you maniacs! You went hard Brexit! God damn you! God damn you all to hell!”

Cabinet shuffle

Gulf News

 

THE international stock of UK prime minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson is becoming diminished by the week and taking with it the last shreds of moral and political authority that Britain once had.

In all the political conflicts of pandemic mis-management and Brexit elitism, it seems that, in the mind of the British PM, what matters most is the pursuit of power. He has always been single-minded to this end and does all he can to resist constraints on that power.

Johnson, who is widely regarded by those who know or have worked with him, to have the attention span of a nat, is not interested in policy, let alone policy detail. He waivers constantly, in tune with nothing more than the shifting wind of opinion, and has no convictions about things that really matter such as Brexit, climate change, levelling up, culture wars or tackling poverty.

Apart from himself, all he cares about is how policy plays with the Tory Party, its supporters and the voters, many of whom he has hoodwinked into thinking he is something much more than he is.

All this helps to explain some of the sackings in this week’s cabinet reshuffle, because ministers whose stock has fallen with the venerable Party become vulnerable, regardless of their abilities.

The prime duty of Johnson’s replacements this week is hardly to deliver a particular agenda, but to keep themselves, and the Party, popular in readiness for the next election.

At the risk of re-stating what is now becoming patently obvious, the key things driving the Johnson government are riches for the already super wealthy, Party and Tory donor management, all aligned with increasing control of Parliament, the courts and the media.

From Johnson’s myopic perspective the cabinet reshuffle was intended to portray energy (working tirelessly, getting on with the job) and renewal. But, in the real world, all that happened was the removal of the least popular members of his team, which was also a non-damaging way to shift people who should have been sacked for incompetence and breaking rules long ago.

It was also a way for Johnson to ensure he is surrounded by an increasingly sycophantic protection ring.

This then folks is the guy that is leading the UK to a populist, ideological disaster, a nightmare world that will make a few dangerous people very wealthy and all too powerful.

Hidden in plain sight

“I have been a political reporter for almost three decades,” writes Peter Oborne in his new book, “and I have never encountered a senior British politician who lies and fabricates so regularly, so shamelessly and so systematically as Boris Johnson.”

The Assault on Truth - more like a slim dossier with full supporting evidence - attempts to explain the current apparently shambolic state of UK politics, and how Johnson has turned it against itself as he seeks to divide and rule.

In the first part, Oborne uses a mass of irrefutable evidence to prove that Johnson (and most of his senior advisors and ministers) habitually lie, fabricate and misrepresent the facts.

Having built the case, seemingly rather easily it turns out, he examines Johnson’s methodology of deception by selecting some of the most powerful and shocking examples.

Oborne then attempts to answer the question, what led the Conservative party to install such a person as leader and the British people to put an already proven liar in Downing Street?

He suggests that morality in public life (an by inference perhaps society at large too) has changed in recent years, over-turning the protections against deceit and corruption instilled by our Victorian ancestors, many inspired by evangelical Christianity.

“It may be fashionable to mock them today, but the Victorians brought high ideals into government which changed the way that Britain was ruled,” he writes.

Oborne also claims - and he should know, having worked on both the Telegraph and Spectator (the latter under Johnson as editor) - that “a great deal of political journalism has become the putrid face of a corrupt government” flying in the face of the only valid reason to become a journalist, which is “to tell the truth”.

He writes: “Too much of the political class have merged. And this unnatural amalgamation has converted truth into falsehood, while lies have become truth.”

Much of the documented evidence in The Assault on Truth is both difficult to deny (although it has become the duty of Johnson’s ministers daily to defend the indefensible) and shocking at the same time.

With forensic dissection, Oborne notes the small and large steps along the twisting path of 21st century politics to the place we have sadly arrived at today, where lies and trite, three-word slogans rule over difficult or politically complex areas.

Johnson is presented as an ambitious, self-seeking politician whose campaigning exuberance and populist comic polemic character is gradually being undermined by “incompetence and dishonesty in high office”.

But while there is little doubt that Johnson is both deceitful and amoral, Oborne says the prime minister’s war on truth is also part of a wider, largely right-wing, attack on the pillars of democracy, which includes Parliament, the rule of law and the civil service.

Oborne is honest enough to admit that he has changed his own mind on Brexit since voting for it in the 2016 referendum. Given his calibre as a journalist and his lifelong pursuit of the truth the only surprise in this is that he did not see through the blatant lies of the Vote Leave campaign at the time.

Perhaps the most disturbing thing in this book is not that Johnson is a habitual liar (though that is bad enough) but that, as a society, the UK has been prepared to protect (via the media) and support (by the public) him and his government in it.

Ultimately, the consequences of allowing such political trickery and wickedness to go unchallenged and unchecked for so long are grave indeed.

 

 

 

 

 

The Assault on Truth - Peter Oborne (2021)

Best purchased from your local, independent bookshop.

Car crash politics

THE UK government’s handling of the virus pandemic has been breath-takingly incompetent at almost every stage. It may sound harsh but when the facts are reviewed it is not hard to reach such a conclusion.

Johnson and his cabinet have always claimed they are being “led by science” not politics. But many scientists who are not in the government’s inner circle have voiced serious concerns and expressed alternative views.

And what exactly is scientific about having no mass testing? A lack of personal protection equipment for NHS staff? No protection for our care homes? And no social distancing for seven weeks after the first case of coronavirus was reported in the UK?

Italy, Singapore, Germany, Switzerland, France, Japan, China, South Korea all introduced measures at an early stage to try and contain the spread of coronavirus. In the UK, Johnson’s initial response was, “Take it on the chin.”

The government's daily press conferences and media interviews by ministers have largely become an enraging exercise in fluent, complacent, platitudinous stonewalling. No answers to important questions, just evasive promises along the lines that everything will improve sometime soon.

Much of it boils down to a government that fundamentally objects to scrutiny -  the Commons has sat for one full month in Johnson’s first 10 as premier. And one of the reasons for this is because it is founded on political ideologies. For a decade it hasn’t valued or protected the people the country depends on, and it has spent years weakening the NHS and social care. Now, faced with the real world, it is struggling to accept its own culpability.

Why, for example, are there still around 15,000 people a day flying into the UK. That's the equivalent of 105,000 passengers a week, including those flying in from countries with their own serious Covid-19 outbreaks, like the US, China, Spain and Italy.

Even America has banned entry for people from Britain and elsewhere in Europe, whereas the UK has no such limits in place and deems it not important to impose health checks or a period in quarantine on people arriving at UK airports.

It seems increasingly apparent that this is a single-pony, Brexit-driven government with no script or comprehension for serious subjects, and is at its flagrant happiest when dishing out slogan politics.

A lamentable conclusion to draw from the UK government’s overall handling of the crisis so far is that its approach has appeared largely reactive and laissez faire, at least on the surface. In the corridors of money and power, however, there may be more sinister political forces at work.

In recent days it has seemed disingenuous for ministers to repeatedly infer that the British public are not capable of engaging in or understanding a proper debate about how a Covid-19 exit strategy is going to be managed in the weeks to come? As a result, one might also be inclined to conclude that UK plc currently has no plausible lock-down exit strategy.

If anything, public compliance with the lock-down has been more solid than anticipated and there is no evidence that people will stop complying if ministers start talking openly about how and when some restrictions might be lifted. Democracy entails debate.

Inspite of Covid-19, the government has also been adamant it sees no reason to change its looming Brexit trajectory, even though we’re less than nine months away from the transition period ending with no future trade terms in place.

The consequences of such a final EU departure are now magnified in economic terms because they will come on top of the grisly impact of the pandemic, as outlined by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) this week.

The government’s proposition is that, despite a predicted (albeit possibly short term) 35 percent fall in GDP, a rise in unemployment to maybe three million and annihilation of public finances, it remains the inviolable “will of the people” to add the effects of Brexit (with or without a deal) to the devastation being wrought by the virus pandemic.

As the managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) put it earlier this week in advising an extension - “why make a tough situation even tougher?” With coronavirus still rampant and economies tanking there are surely no rational arguments against agreeing an extension to allow time for a proper trade deal.

As summer 2020 unfolds, the days and weeks ahead will shine an ever more critical spotlight on Johnson and his egalitarian government’s handling of the pandemic. And it may yet prove to be one of the most egregious and catastrophic failures of democratic leadership in our lifetime.

But given Johnson's shoddy and disingenuous performance on other issues - such as on Brexit, immigration policy and even his response to the devastating winter flooding across the UK - it can surely come as no surprise that the UK is rapidly staking claim to be the poor man of Europe when it comes to its abject handling of the coronavirus crisis.

Sunday Times (19 April 2020) -  38 days when Britain sleepwalked into disaster