The main parties have engaged in a conspiracy of silence over Brexit, during the election. The Liberals have relegated it to the back of their Manifesto, and EU membership as a far distant goal, much as the Left sects do with Socialism, as they pursue their immediate interests. The Greens are slightly, but not much, more vociferous in noting the damaging effects of Brexit, but it s only the SNP and Plaid that really make more of it, rather hypocritically given their own nationalist and separatist agenda. There is the Rejoin The EU Party, but its really an irrelevance to the election.
Yet, Brexit, and the need to re-join the EU, is, itself, far from being an irrelevance. On the contrary. It is central, which is why the main parties have engaged in a conspiracy of silence over it, because it exposes the thorough bankruptcy and duplicity of their polices and politics. It does not matter what issue is considered, whether the economy, employment, workers' rights, taxation, the environment, migration, war, health and social care, education, science, transport etc., the damage done by Brexit, and the need to re-join the EU to resolve it, cannot be avoided.
Take the economy. It is 6% smaller than it would have been had Brexit not happened. That is a loss of £140 billion of wealth that could have gone to schools, hospitals, welfare, and raising living standards. It would have increased employment and so on. Nor has that damage ended. It will be a continuing and growing hit to the economy, for as long as Britain stays out of the EU, because it is the closest and biggest trading partner. By 2035, the economy will be more than 10% smaller than it would have been, equivalent to £311 billion of lost wealth, compared to had Britain remained in the EU.
All of the Brexiters claims about it enabling Britain to establish new markets on the other side of the world, epitomised by Truss's speech about selling port in China, were nonsense at the time, and proved to be such in what has followed.
The trade deals done did not even replicate those Britain had with those countries as a member of the EU, and necessarily so, because the EU, as the world's largest single market has far more heft in trade negotiations than the relatively small British state. Its like expecting the corner shop to be able to negotiate as good a deal with suppliers as TESCO. In fact, the trade deals done with New Zealand and Australia, in desperation to be able to say a deal had been done, are very bad deals from a British perspective.
The Tories have tried to claim that the UK economy has done better than economies in the EU, but that is only in terms of recent growth, following earlier poorer performance. Moreover, there are specific reasons why EU economies have performed poorly more recently, though those reasons come down to self-inflicted wounds imposed as part of the imperialist conflict with Russia and China. The boycott of Russian oil and gas raised energy costs, and caused disruption for the EU on a greater scale than for the UK, which still has access to North Sea oil and gas, for example.
In addition, the EU economy is significantly driven by the powerhouse that is the German economy, and it has grown, in recent times, by its high value manufactured goods exported to China. But, as part of the growing global inter-imperialist conflict between NATO and Russia/China, increasing barriers to trade with China have been created, whose economy was also slowed by its imposition of lockdowns. With China facing restrictions on its exports, it has responded, in turn. Its notable that Germany has opposed the recent proposals to impose high levels of tariffs on Chinese EV's into Europe, recognising the potential for similar restrictions on its own luxury cars exported to China.
Moreover, the data on, for example UK exports, is interesting, because of the role of the UK in relation to gold trading. Sky News' Ed Conway has shown that the claims about an improved export performance since Brexit, put forward by Sunak, falls apart once you take the re-export of gold out of the figures.
But, the UK, outside the EU, has not escaped these rises in costs either. It not only took part in the boycott of Russian oil and gas, but, as the European agent of US imperialism, was in the vanguard of proposing it. The US and UK, of course, not only have their own domestic oil and gas production, but are home to the world's largest energy companies, operating around the world, and benefiting from those higher oil and gas prices.
Similarly, Britain, that was only a few years ago touting Brexit as enabling it to divert its attention to the faster growing markets in China and the Pacific, has also tagged along as the poodle to the US in that developing trade war with China. However, despite it joining the Pacific trade partnership, it has been unable to significantly increase its exports to China and the Pacific, and lags behind Germany in that respect. So, the slow down in China, necessarily, affected Britain less than Germany and the rest of the EU, because it was smaller to begin with. That would still have been the case had Britain remained in the EU.
Indeed, the latest data shows that not only has Britain's trade with the EU suffered, but so as its trade with other countries, because in order to produce goods that are sold to those other countries it is still reliant on components produced inside the EU, and Brexit has both caused delays in the supply chain, and raised the costs to Britain of those components, so that its prices to other countries have risen. Many other countries have shifted to buying from the EU directly.
The temporary effects of the recent boycott of Russian energy, and so on, are just that – temporary – but the damaging effects of Brexit are permanent, so long as it is outside the EU.
No comments:
Post a Comment