December 1, 2018
Two of the most perilous military operations are crossing rivers while under enemy fire, and retreat while engaged with enemy forces.
Britain’s embattled Prime Minister, Theresa May, must accomplish both maneuvers if she is to extract her very confused nation from the horrid Brexit mess and save her job. We wish her lots of luck.
On December 11th, British members of parliament must vote to accept some sort of Brexit deal; a negotiated withdrawal and/or trade association. But there is bitter opposition within May’s Conservative Party and rival Labour Party to Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union. The rump Northern Irish Unionist Party, which shores up May’s Tories in parliament, is making everyone crazy.
Increasing numbers of British voters now think that the original referendum to withdraw Britain from the European Union after four decades of grudging membership was a catastrophic mistake. Britain was one of Europe’s big three members; without with EU, Britain will be marooned somewhere off the coast of northern Europe and forced to become totally responsive to US demands and policies.
Equally vexing, the proud Brits, who a century ago ruled a quarter of the globe’s surface, will be forced to see old rivals Germany and France become the undisputed kingpins of Europe while no one pays attention to the toothless old British lion.
British supporters of Brexit don’t care. They tend to dislike foreigners…aka ‘bloody wogs’…, chafe at regulations imposed by faceless bureaucrats in remote Brussels, fret over a rising tide of EU immigrants, fulminate over the steep costs imposed by the EU, and deeply resent being compelled to accept working in the EU collective instead of trumpeting imperial demands.
But times and economic realities have changed. Britain is no longer the manufacturing powerhouse it was before World War II. Its industries are rusting, the quality of its manufactured products questioned (Dyson excepted) and the once mighty financial power of the City of London diminished.
Europe’s money lenders and their ilk are slinking off to Frankfurt and Paris; the City of London is no longer the wild, anything goes casino where all sorts of financial chicanery was quietly tolerated. London is slowly losing its charmed existence as a tax refuge – or to quote Somerset Maugham’s great quip about Monaco, ‘a sunny place for shady people’.
As Britain’s economy deflates under Brexit, its working class will have refuge against the snobs and toffs who sneered at them for generations and perpetuated the class system. But ditching the EU will be like Britain shooting itself in the foot. All economic signs show that Britain will be impoverished if Brexit happens. Everything – the stock markets, industry, trade, housing – are pointed downhill. Divorcing Britain from the EU will be nightmarishly complex and fraught. The Bank of England warns that Brexit will plunge the country into a serious recession.
All this for the sake of national ego and a chance to stick it to the ‘bloody foreigners’. Certainly not worth the expense or national anguish, say many sensible Brits and the Labour Party. The Tories are split over the issue and locked in bitter infighting. The leading Conservative MP’s remind one of all the things we didn’t like about snobby, imperial Britain.
The way out of this nasty mess is for Parliament to do its job and mandate another referendum. Many pro-Brexit voters misunderstood the real issues and regret their hastiness. Divorce is always ugly and painful. After all the shouting and name-calling, Britain will be left with a cup of cold flat tea, not the golden chalice it hoped for.
Copyright Eric S. Margolis 2018
This post is in: European Union, Great Britain
I’m not sure if most voters for Brexit were aware of the long term consequences/rewards. I think the reaction was because of the large increase in ‘foreigners’, the social burden caused by the immigrants, the decrease in social status, the decrease in gainful employment and cost of accommodations.
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The Brits were not prepared to give up their sovereignty, and, considered themselves as ‘second class citizens’ within the EU. Their vote to leave created yet another problem. They could not re-join without incurring the wrath of the other EU states; their position within the European community would be greatly diminished. Having decided to have a vote, in the event an exit was indicated, put them on a one way path. I’m surprised the politicians weren’t aware of this likely outcome. Having decided to leave, it was a matter of focusing their energy to bring this quickly to fruition.
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I’m not sure leaving has put the Brits at the mercy of the Americans. The Brits can develop business connections with the EU, China, Russia, South America, the Middle East, Africa, and with US permission, Canada. This latter condition is a feature Trudeau junior agreed to in the new NAFTA.
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The UK has to concentrate on improving its manufacturing segment. Manufacturing was largely bombed out of the forefront during WW2, and hasn’t significantly developed. After the war, industries in Europe that were destroyed, rebuilt using new equipment and techniques. Britain, for some reason, did not; this was possibly due to their being financially drained. The Americans took a terrible toll for the American input into the war effort.
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There has to be a realignment in taxation with those that can afford to pay taxes and those that cannot. This is a global issue. There has been a noted deterioration in their National Health System as well as their education system as a result of this ‘tax base’ shift.
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It seems odd that Germany and France are now the economic antagonists, whereas it’s my understanding that Britain and France were partially complicit in declaring war on Germany for economic reasons. Poland, I understand, was only incidental. I guess what ‘goes around, comes around’.
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Regarding manufacturing prowess, your reference to Dyson if fitting; a lot of the hype is advertising, and, not manufacturing. There used to be a comment from my earlier years (I really liked British sportscars and had several). The answer to the question why Brits liked warm beer was that British Leyland built refrigerators.
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As you note, since before World War II, the UK has lost much of it’s appeal, and, is just a ‘has been’, imperial power. The UK, having a West Coast Marine Climate, is an ideal environment for manufacturing and education; they have to be diligent and work hard to bring themselves into the 21st century.
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Somerset Maugham’s great quip about Monaco, ‘a sunny place for shady people’, is a great line, with some truth.
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I don’t agree with mandating another referendum. There was a reason the first one ‘went badly’, and, nothing has improved in that regard. A second referendum, if ‘to stay’, would mean that the UK would have to approach the EU on their knees asking for forgiveness for the UK’s transgression. This would be less palatable for the UK. They have a tough road ahead, and, I wish them all the success.
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Dik
Manufacturing in Britain in the past 150 years has played second fiddle to investments in the Empire which produced many spectacular returns. The banking system was oriented for this kind of investment contrasted to Germany which did not have as great an empire. Banking and manufacturing were closely integrated whereas in Britain, manufacturing in certain classes was looked down upon.
Also the class system in Britain was very much in force and investing in your people with education, training and tools seems not to have been part of the investor/business mentality. In Germany, there were more advanced social programs and worker involvement in the management process.
If you don’t invest, you don’t progress. Now the UK has nearly 70 million people, very limited energy resources and is reliant on imports for virtually every commodity. Hardly the basis to re-launch a manufacturing infrastructure.
The financial aspect was there, with London being somewhat at the centre. The UK was heavily invested in import and export as well.
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Since Victorian times (If you recall, it was the time of the mechanical revolution), manufacturing has been a mainstay of the UK. People think of the Victorian times as being the ‘prurient’ part of British civilisation; the reality is that it was also the peak of the manufacturing era. They had cast iron ‘dohickys’ (piggy banks, doorstops, paperweights, etc.), stairs, railings (the stairs, and guardrails in many of Canada’s armouries were cast iron manufactured in the UK), intricate castings, etc. and serious electrical and mechanical equipment that was exported worldwide.
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The historic hydro generating station at Pointe du Bois, Manitoba has turbines and generators that were fabricated in the UK, and they are still in active use, more than a century later.
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Dik
My first observation is:
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My first contention is that the UK should never have joined the European Union in the first place; they were sold a bill of goods based on the government’s hope of expanding financial markets. This is based on the UK personality, and, the masses bought it hook, line, and sinker.
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I’ve noted often that joining the EU meant that the UK would have to give up some of its sovereignty; I was pretty sure that, at heart, the UK would never do this… it’s not British , you know. Joining the EU was doomed from the beginning.
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Dik
The referendum debate revolved around a series of alarmist fibs emanating from the entitled and self-interested but oherwise somewhat useless Boris and Co who were having a bit of fun rallying the plebs by any means, with lots of help from Rupert and his suck-ups. Unfortunately the liberal “middle” have become snobs, despite their PC window dressing, and have only too happy to leave the white working class to rot for decades. Playing with fire IMO. Thus abandoned, in favour of more fashionable causes, they could end up turning to a lot worse than Nigel Farage. It’s only now, at five minutes before midnight, that the issues involved have actually become clear and are getting discussed, even on the BBC. Apologies for being a smart**”*, but I joked two years ago that the IRA would be back in business and the truck queues to Dover would reach Manchester. This was met with much bafflement by otherwise intelligent folk, which is some indication of how the referendum debate had been conducted. At long last, people are finally hearing that trading arrangements actually have to be negotiated, customs arrangements can be painful, and you can’t make a hard border between two entirely separate jurisdictions go away with an iPhone app.
I don’t think they were ‘alarmist fibs’. The problems were there to be seen, and, the effect was on the common person. Their daily lot had diminished over the years, and the unfettered immigration was an obvious and visible cause.
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Dik
The irony of the whole Brexit mess is that, before it joined the EEC at the beginning of 1973. the UK under four prime ministers – MacMillan, Douglas-Home, Wilson, and Heath – was pounding on the door of the Common Market to allow it to become a member. Now, after more than 40 years as a member of the EEC / EU, the UK has said it wants out. It’s certainly not the only EU country to be chafing under the multitude of strangling regulations put out by the Brussels bureaucrats, but leaving the organization makes one wonder how the UK will be clearly better off on its own. At the very least, the UK will need to have with the EU a trade agreement similar to what the EFTA countries have (Switzerland actually has a separate trade agreement with the EU). It could even try to rejoin the old EFTA. But, striking out on its own without any kind of a life-raft will leave the British in a terrible mess.
A further note. Does this sound familiar? From a BBC News item on the French riots today.
“But across the country the cause is extremely popular. They say – quite proudly – that they are the “sans-dents”, the great unwashed, the forgotten majority from the sticks. And they’ve had enough.”
“sans-dents”, “deplorables”, “Brexiters”. There is a message in there to which the western elites and the vast majority of the media corps are deaf.
The average citizen in Britain was being hammered by low wages and inflating housing costs. You’ve hear of gentrification? – the process whereby the poor are forced out of an urban area by rising prices. Well that was happening in the UK with London especially no longer being a British city.
So low wages, inflated housing costs, “financially cleansed” cities and add in high crime and you have very big reasons to demand change by a large number or people. There is also the factor of the “green zone” being turned into Swiss cheese by rampant development.
From a longer term perspective, the concept of bringing more people into Britain is ludicrous. The country is resource negative in any commodity you can name from food to energy to minerals. Energy embedded in imports add another 30+% to this resource deficit.
So the future for Brits, as with many struggling middle and lower classers in western country was to accept their declining lot or vote for change when they had the chance.
Why are elites not able to understand the math from the lower rungs on the ladder?
Cheers,
John
Then try to explain, in clear terms, how the UK – including the people on the “lower rungs” of life – will be clearly better off after it breaks away from the EU. What will the country do, for instance, if Scotland votes to secede, taking with it the North Sea oil resources, in order to negotiate its own “re-entry” into the EU? I’m with Eric and the rest who believe that the UK (including the people on the “lower rungs”) will be worse off without the EU and will regret leaving it, so by all means try to prove us all wrong.
We’ll see what happens to the cost of housing and real wages plus the wage and employment gains at lower and middle income levels. If these are positive, then Brexit will be a success.
But the media probably will not cover these, they’ll point to falling real estate prices and possibly lower GDP and cry catastrophe. And for them, and their finance, cheap labour and realtor sponsors, it will be. But the nation will be better off.
But we’ll see in a couple of years.
“Why are elites not able to understand the math from the lower rungs on the ladder?”
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The answer is simple… the elites are at the top of the ladder, gazing off into a relatively comfortable future… never bothering to look down; it’s beneath them.
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Dik