The Right Turn in Britain Crashed With Brexit
The right-wing Reform party won by votes but got very little influence and are not at all helpful with recovering after the devastating effects of Brexit.
After a long series of attempts, the British Conservative party failed to realize the promised benefits of Brexit. With a slight bit of sarcasm, we might say that Brexit actually helped Britain avoid the right turn seen on the Continent, in most European countries’ politics - because the right turn was Brexit itself. We also know by now, that Brexit was a complete failure and did not deliver anything near what was promised, on the contrary, it meant lots of trouble.
We must note, though, that the right-wing Reform party of Nigel Farage won a record 14.3% of the popular vote, making them third after Labour and Conservatives. But because of the arcane voting system in Britain, most of these votes were wasted and resulted only in 4 out of over 600 seats. The original right turn was within the Conservative party, and caused havoc.
Now, the Labour party is taking over, and it looks like it will not be nice to watch. More importantly, it will again increase the challenges and hard times for the population, the workers, the pensioners and even the already hard hit lower middle class. Keir Starmer is going for what is described as a much needed clean-up. It is fair to say, that a new government always should look in the cupboards to reveal any skeletons hidden away there by the previous government, but in this case most of the skeletons, major issues, are already out in the open and well known. It is the measures needed to counter the challenges that are getting revealed, and it comes with some surprises and hard hits.
In yesterday’s speech in the Parliament, the new finance minister Rachel Reeves described the situation and announced some of the measures necessary in order to straighten up the situation.
“The document I am publishing today reveals a projected overspend on the asylum system, including their failed Rwanda plan, for this year alone of more than £6.4bn. That was unfunded and undisclosed.
Next, in the wake of the pandemic, demand for rail services fell. But instead of developing a proper plan to adjust for this new reality, the government handed out cash to rail companies to make up for passenger shortfalls, but failed to budget for this adequately. Because of that, and because of industrial action, there is now an overspend of £2.9bn in the transport budget. That was unfunded and undisclosed.
Mr Speaker, since 2022, the government – with the support of this whole House – has rightly provided military assistance to Ukraine in response to the Russian invasion. The spending audit has found that there was not enough money set aside in the reserve to fund all these costs. We will continue to honour these commitments in full.
On top of these new pressures, since 2021, inflation was above the Bank of England’s target for 33 months in a row – hitting 11% at its peak. But the government has not held a Spending Review since 2021. That means they never fully reflected the impact of inflation in departmental budgets.
…
Mr Speaker, where the previous government ducked the difficult decisions, I am taking action. Because knowing what they did about the state of the public finances, they continued to make unfunded commitment after commitment that they knew they could not afford. Leaving us with an overspend of £22bn this year. Where they presided over recklessness, I will bring responsibility.”
Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves statement to the House of Commons on 29/07/2024. Published by HM Treasury.
So, there is a big hole in the budget and urgent action must be taken already before winter. The previous government of course denies that there has been anything hidden under the covers, and they left everything in a much better state than when they took it over.
Not the biggest one, but one that certainly will be felt is that some pensioners will see cuts in help to pay their heating bill in winter. That amounts to a total 1.4 billion £. If this winter is cold it will become a major issue. But the remaining more than 20 billion £ is either not covered for yet, to be identified by government branches, or found by cancelling already agreed projects. One of these is a tunnel under Stonehenge, a surprisingly visible cost in the overall budget.
On the other hand, the Labour government says it is not considering higher income taxes and VAT, which is at least one positive point for their voters. For now. Not lower taxes, not any incentives to reinvigorate the ailing economy. That will have to wait for later, when the government has made come up with plans. But the reality is that UK is in need of reforms to plug the holes punched by Brexit. Labour was against Brexit, but now it is up to them to figure out how to rebuild the economy after the storm.
First option - to find a way back to EU, which is completely out of the question. At least for a number of years, many. EU is not interested, especially Germany and France are unofficially quite happy with less opposition to further their own agendas in Brussels. Britain is not interested, because it would be a humiliating and tedious way that people will not want to spend more time and effort on. Brexit was a failure but it cannot be glued together.
Second option - get the best possible agreements in place with EU to patch as many holes as possible. Those are of course mainly concerning trade and tariffs, plus the excruciating paperwork that is killing many small and larger British businesses that were used to seamless trade with EU and now are basically unable to export. That goes for fish, agricultural products, cars and many other products that used to sustain large groups in the British population.
Third option - start realizing some of the many possible free trade agreements with non-EU countries. Those were much touted by Boris Johnson in particular as much more valuable than the EU internal market. But they never realized except a few smaller ones with smaller markets, typically just copied from the earlier EU agreements, but not anything near replacing the EU market. There has not been a deal agreed with USA, although it was defined as a priority in the Conservative 2019 manifesto.
What a complete mess! I assume only options 2 and 3 are viable, right? What do you recommend?