In the haze of 2016, Brexit was an issue of sovereignty, an issue of national pride, etc. Pumped-up patriotism was everywhere.
Now, Brexit is an ongoing, herniated, disaster, and that’s according to the British public. Possible consequences were not being considered, and Boris Johnson said in so many words that only a lunatic would want to leave the single market.
Well, how about that. The current situation in the UK is that shortages are now biting everywhere. Everything that was predicted has come true, and it’s only just starting.
At the most basic level, everything is an absolute shambles. There are not enough drivers to handle distribution of food or anything else. The army is being called in to distribute fuel. Grocery shelves are emptying. Food is quite literally rotting in the fields because the European workers who used to harvest that food aren’t there anymore. Meanwhile, UK farmers no longer receive EU subsidies which used to finance their production. It’s a perfect storm of incompetence.
European drivers aren’t even slightly interested in short-term contracts to manage distribution issues.
The trade situation is nothing less than appalling. Britain has been trying to sign new trade deals, but unsurprisingly, the deals take time. Exports to Europe, Britain’s biggest trading partner, have been effectively sabotaged by Brexit.
Customs checks have been promised for two years, and are still not in place. Europe had its customs checks in place years ago. 50,000 new bureaucrats have been hired simply to manage this situation.
The pandemic, of course, didn’t help. That said, the macroeconomic situation would be very much the same with or without the pandemic. The physical issues of failed distribution and supply would apply anyway. So would the many catastrophic micro and macroeconomic financial issues.
Long-term horror story
The point is that Britain is not going to simply get up and walk away from this train wreck. It can’t. Economically, Britain’s legs have quite literally been cut out from under it. Long-term economic damage and dysfunction are unavoidable. A lot of real damage has been done. Many businesses are now hitting a crisis point or have already done so.
Real money, and a lot of it, is being lost. The trade situation is abysmal. Loss of trade means loss of revenue, and Britain is raising debt at a phenomenal rate. Loss of local business trade means loss of VAT, another instant budget hit.
The finance sector, Britain’s equivalent of Wall Street, and equally insular, has also been hit. This is by far the biggest money spinner in the country, and it’s feeling a bit queasy. Some of Britain’s finance sector has actually repositioned to Ireland, an EU member state. That’s the level of sincerity and faith in Brexit as applied by some of its strongest proponents.
Much less impressively, Trump-like denial is everywhere. I regularly see people saying there aren’t any shortages, for example, on social media. The headlines say otherwise, every few minutes. Even mentioning Brexit as a cause of any problems seems to be forbidden in the anti-democratic press. The pro-Brexit Murdoch media is still waving flags furiously, and much good it’s doing, or can possibly do.
Europe is responsible for the problems, apparently, when even the basic idea of Brexit originated in the UK. The European Union is said to be “failing”, when the UK is visibly falling to pieces. This is also a Trump/US conservative line of talk, based on absolutely nothing.
As the sun sets on the Union Jack
To add to the joys, Scottish independence is now a real possibility. Scotland and the north of England are traditionally on the wrong end of any economic bad times, and this is no exception. If Scotland leaves the union, that also means less revenue, possibly significantly less revenue at a time of increasing government debt.
This is not a “muddle through” scenario. It’s make or break. Britain’s credibility as a nation has been quite unnecessarily put into a ridiculous situation. To describe the handling of any and all these issues as insane would be unjustifiable flattery.
Years ago, I called Brexit “Dunkirk in reverse”. This is a major failure of national strategy on a horrific level. In this case, the people are left stranded in so many ways. The UK used to be a very influential member of the biggest trading bloc in the world. Now it’s an outsider, stuck with multiple economically destructive issues that never needed to happen.
Also very much the point – The current UK government doesn’t seem to take any of this unholy disaster seriously. This is where credibility really matters, and the UK government is failing on all points. Johnson’s off-the-cuff style is very much out of place in this environment.
The lack of a long-term plan is much too obvious. Where will Britain be in, five years from now? That’s a standard job interview question, and Britain does not have anything like an answer, let alone a credible answer.
Can this mess lead to a failed state? Yes.
That ought to be a rhetorical question and a purely theoretical answer. Unfortunately for the UK, it isn’t. The U.K.’s credit rating alone could be decimated. That’s bad news for a highly indebted nation. Money could become a lot more expensive, quickly.
If that happens, financing in the UK is going to be an absolute nightmare. Insurance, loans, raising capital, financing business initiatives, government expenditure, acquisitions, debt consolidation, you name it; everything can and probably will get a lot more expensive.
In a scenario where the domestic economy is to put it politely imploding, that is not a good look. The microeconomic environment is getting a lot worse, very quickly. Increases in food prices can’t help much either. Savings will definitely be impacted, and probably severely, perhaps for years.
If enough people are sufficiently badly affected, British social welfare simply will not be able to cope. With the large numbers of homeless already on the streets, it’s not doing very well now. “Social and generational apocalypse” might be a bit of an overstatement, but not much, and not for long at this rate.
Why do foreigners care?
Those of us with a very long British ancestry are appalled by this idiotic self- destruction. My own Anglicised family name goes back 2000 years. We had a very long history in England.
I grew up in a very Anglo family, and was lucky enough to be introduced to some of England’s most brilliant writers, artists, and the actual English culture before it turned into a sewer. That culture was infinitely superior to the ridiculous collection of knob jokes and boring platitudes “English culture” has become.
The physical relationship with the UK was pretty practical back then. Two of my uncles flew in the RAF during the war, one died. My father and another uncle fought with British troops in the desert and in Greece. My brother-in-law died in Singapore. “Thick and thin” was quite literally the story back then. Now, it’s just thick.
We had, and have, a lot of British friends. To see the country put through this gratuitous, maniacal, recipe for national failure is to put it mildly infuriating. This is way beyond a few useless drunks at Lloyd’s and pathetic, ridiculous, stiff upper heads. This is true ruin, and it is right in front of your smug, stupid, pig- ignorant, gutless, faces.
To see a collection of worthless, incompetent, overprivileged, small-time rich moronic peasant brats destroying the country is therefore not exactly appealing. The Spirit of the Blitz has been replaced by a smarmy, backward, delusional idiocy. Don’t expect us to like this crap or say nothing about it. The people responsible should be held to account.
