I studied English political history for O/Ls and A/Ls, read history at Oxford and did a PhD with a strong element of post-war history. I stood first for Parliament in 1974 and was a Labour MP for 18 years and a minister in the Blair government. Yet never ever has British politics been in such a state of crisis as over Brexit.
Brexit is like a political Ebola virus insinuating itself into every cell of the British body politic. Everyone now sees that Brexit is turning into an economic and political disaster for Britain. Banks are relocating staff. UK growth is the worst in the OECD. After years of foreign direct investment surpluses, there is now a foreign direct investment deficit. 19 million British citizens live below the official poverty line.
Britain’s credit rating has been downgraded by the rating agency Moody. Productivity growth is the lowest in the advanced world. Only massive printing of money by the Bank of England has kept the UK economy alive since Brexit. Despite the devaluation of the pound sterling by nearly 20 per cent exports are down.
The CEO of Goldman Sachs tweeted that he expected to be spending more time in Frankfurt as financial services business would transfer out of London to keep access to the EU Single Market. Michael Bloomberg said this week Brexit is “the stupidest thing any country has done beside Trump” (24 October) and now regrets investing in a major new London centre for his business.
The rest of Europe and the world is looking at Britain and seeing the decision to leave Europe as a denial of the legendary pragmatic common sense of the British.
A vote of just 37 per cent of the British registered electorate has produced this crisis.
The poor British prime minister Theresa May, her deputy and her Chancellor of the Exchequer all said Brexit would be a disaster but now have to stand on their heads, swallow their words, and insist leaving Europe will be wonderful.
The opposition Labour Party has no idea what to do other than sit on the deckchairs enjoying the captain and officers of the Good Ship Britannia lose steerage and navigation and compass with no idea of what to do next.
At the 6th Thessaloniki International Symposium on World Affairs last weekend (22nd October) one of the British speakers said that compared to Britain, Greece now looks like a well-governed, stable state facing up to terrible problems inherited from the past compared to the chaos, confusion and political instability of today’s Britain thanks to Brexit.
No-one in London appears to know how to get out of the Brexit quagmire. But at least the rest of Europe has learnt that talk about quitting the EU leads to hell not heaven.