The consequences of failing your IQ test.
When the U.K. collectively failed its IQ test by voting for Brexit, the consequences were always going to be bad. It’s not something for Remainers to rejoice over.
Gosh! Two storIes in a single day!
While I have no affinity for U.K. Tories I encourage all readers to invest 16 minutes to hear Ken Clarke’s brilliant, impassioned and prescient speech from 2017. He nailed the potential for a Brexit fiasco.
I vividly recall the night I heard about the U.K. Brexit referendum result. I was living in California and had taken scant interest in the outcome as, at that time, I had no plans to return to my country of birth. Nevertheless, I called one of my politically active colleagues and asked a simple question:
Me: Did the U.K. just collectively fail it’s IQ test?
A: Yes
Me: Now what?
A: G-d knows but it’s going to be painful.
To this day I don’t fully understand what happened but I do see the consequences.
In my youth, passing an IQ test was the first step towards a (near) guaranteed higher education place at a good university. From there it was on to a profession - think doctor, lawyer, accountant, civil servant, architect or academic. Fail the IQ and you likely ended up in what was called a technical college where you were encouraged to acquire a trade. We can argue about the fairness or otherwise and elitist nature of IQ tests but there is no getting away from the fact that failure carried a certain stigma. As I look at the U.K. today, that same stigma applies to a nation that’s rapidly becoming a failed state.
Yesterday I read that the U.K.’s projected performance will be the worst among the G7 and second only to Russia as a country whose GDP will likely shrink in the coming year. Commenters are now turning their attention to the underlying causes and guess what? Brexit emerges as a significant contributing factor. I’m no economist so don’t know how bad this is. What I do know is that it is virtually impossible to have a sane conversation with anyone who is committed to Brexit.
In his column about this topic on iNews, Ian Dunt says:
The polling on Brexit has travelled in one direction and one direction only. There is no mystery to it. It is quite simple: the project has achieved nothing. Someday soon, probably not more than a few years from now, it will be hard to even find people who admit to ever having supported it in the first place.
It will join Suez and Iraq in the great pantheon of catastrophic British errors. But as its support ebbs away, we’ll still be left with the scars. Those who inflicted them on us should hang their heads in shame.
It is hard to disagree with that sentiment but it is just as hard to get any debate from politicians either. It’s as though the B word has become the modern day political equivalent of Kryptonite.
I do however see a broader failure among the British in grasping the economic impact that followed Brexit. Don’t get me wrong. We can all see the impact of inflation, energy costs etc on household budgets but relatively few of us appear to recognise the Brexit effect.
Brexit effects are not hard to find but they get little attention in a way that helps the public understand what’s happening. Take food for instance - a topic with which I am heavily invested.
I’ve yet to see a sustained narrative in mainstream media that explains how the shortage of seasonal workers coming from Europe serves to inflate our shop prices for fruit and vegetables. If you want to know for yourself then check the provenance of the food you buy and then ask why it has become so expensive. Then check how the new myriad of paperwork effectively increases the price of meat and fish in our home market. Instead, we get the catchy but poorly understood talk of ‘supply chain issues.’ Does anyone outside the realm of supply chain logistics understand let alone care about ‘supply chain issues?’
And then there’s the fate of the many small businesses that cannot afford to live with the paperwork imposed by the Brexit fallout. I have seen the odd video on FT.tv that makes the point well, noting the cases of those able to offshore to European centres. Occasionally, the BBC shows a short segment covering these issues but as always seems to be the case, they skate the issues.
For me, one of the most impactful FT stories was about a firm that relocated to mainland Europe. The firm said that while it will continue to thrive, it means less employment in the U.K. and a smaller contribution to U.K. taxes. Sadly, while those examples are many they’re insufficient to stir up wider attention. Even when those cases surface, where is the so-called mainstream media attention for these topics? Nowhere.
Then there’s the question of imports. My chosen hobby includes an important component that requires significant levels of imported parts from a variety of European countries. Local supply for some items is now sporadic or has almost dried up. Freight costs have soared making some parts unaffordable unless they can be bundled into a large order. Shipping delays have spiralled to the point where some goods are taking as long as six weeks to arrive from countries like Poland and the Czech Republic. It used to be a few days. I can get goods faster from China! I wonder how these issues translate to the wider economy.
What about investment in innovation and access to research funding? There is some talk about this but as of today, uncertainty exists as to whether the U.K. will continue to participate in Horizon Europe. This is a €95 billion fund in which the U.K. has, in the past, been particularly successful in attracting valuable research grants. While the U.K. is no Silicon Valley, it has a storied history of contributing important science to the world. In that context, funding for pure and applied scientific research is vital. Cut that off and it’s not hard to envisage our best and brightest decamping elsewhere.
Finally, there’s the travel question. In what seems like a fresh round of Rollerball rule changes, U.K. travellers will be faced with a slew of regulation and delay at European entry points in 2023 and beyond that will make travel a miserable experience. Anyone who has flown from the EU and U.K. to San Francisco or New York knows just how painful it can be if two or more Jumbo Jets arrive at the same time. Now we get to experience the same or similar in Europe. Much as I’d love to travel in Europe I’m not sure I could stomach the kind of delays that used to instil dread when I visited the US.
Remainers will sometimes sneer at Brexiteers saying they should shut up and put up because they got what they voted for. That’s far too simplistic and pointless. For their part Brexiteers, when not being downright rude try talking about a bright future that is difficult if not impossible to imagine. Some try to downplay by saying there was always going to be some disruption but it would be fine in the end. Really? Three years on since the U.K. formally left the EU and I’m sure not feeling any potential upside.
All the imported (cheap?) beef and lamb in the world cannot compensate for the UK’s well earned reputation for maintaining the bloodstock of the world’s best and rare breeds of sheep and cattle. That reputation is at serious risk as the economies of British farming become less sustainable.
The time for political posturing is well past. It’s time for our politicians of all persuasions to start having a meaningful, adult and very public conversation about what happens next. How that theoretical conversation is reported can only be a matter of conjecture. My guess is that meaningful cross-party collaboration will readily expose the insanity of those standing at the extremes.
Will those conversations happen? Perhaps they are albeit in hushed tones or behind closed doors. In truth, I don’t know. My fear is that steady heads will see the risk of ridicule as too great to be vocal. I’d encourage them to reflect on Ken Clarke’s principled position, recognising that principles matter to voters far more than ideology. For those who aspire to becoming part of the next U.K. government, now is the time to stand and be counted as persons willing to sort out the chaotic mess that Brexit has delivered and to stand against the charlatans who got us here. Anything less is a real betrayal of the British people.
Just published today and on point:
https://www.thefullbrexit.com/post/the-legacy-of-brexit
This post is essentially the blue Labour post EU position. Lots of echoes of the pre Blair labour party (whose old manifesto was a pledge to make the City of London join the rest of the UK) plus a lot of this century thinking.
The larger problem here Den is the 'Offshore Empire' - the globalists who have at least $11 trillion stashed offshore and who are heavily vested in breaking down sovereign states into larger land masses with significant immigration to dilute nationalist sentiments. Think EMEA cold blooded business logic over nationally organized citizen safety nets.
Schengen should have been negotiated and retained, but there is little else the rapidly expanding and now rapidly failing EU's has to offer that is good these days. The ominous spectre of unelected officious bureaucrats running europe, demoting national elected politicians such as prime ministers to the status of provincial town mayors is a big warning sign. We are on the verge of a neocon/globalist nuclear WW III ginned up by the usual shadowy offshore provocateurs with a 30's style economic collapse to weaken the plebs resolve.
The reality is there are no good politicians/parties in the USA or Europe right now. Anyone talking common sense won't get a look in. This is a very bleak outlook I know but the people who voted to leave the European union weren't all stupid, they were very frustrated with the bureaucracy and increasing lack of democracy on the horizon.
I am a supporter of Blue Labour in the UK, who were for leaving the EU. You won't be reading about them in the Guardian.
A few links:
The Spider's Web: Britain's Second Empire | Documentary Film about the 'offshore' City of London *highly recommended*
https://youtu.be/np_ylvc8Zj8
Maurice Glasman of 'blue Labour's latest book which I recommend
https://www.amazon.com/Blue-Labour-Politics-Common-Good/dp/1509528865
Glasman talking about book @ RSA
https://www.thersa.org/events/2022/10/building-a-politics-of-the-common-good
Ukraine On Fire - Oliver Stone documentary (2016) about the Maidan Uprising and subsequent agreements for historical context
https://youtu.be/YfC7s1A1KjI
President Volodymyr Zelensky on Dancing With the Stars Ukraine. Zellenskyy Won in 2006.
https://youtu.be/TlJywp7E3Gw
I won't include the link to Zelensky playing the piano with his penis here but you can easily find it on youtube