Brexit is destabilising the United Kingdom

Raymundo Larraín Nesbitt, October, 21. 2022

By Raymond Nesbitt
21st of October 2022

The most traumatic experience any individual can endure during his lifetime are the three D’s: death, debt, and divorce.

Brexit, in effect, was an acrimonious divorce from the EU. The UK’s decoupling of the Union caused severe ripples which have grown in size and intensity overtime threatening the core fabric of the United Kingdom: its stability and unity.

The UK has had three Prime Ministers in under a year, in what constitutes an unprecedented time of political turmoil and chaos. More and more the UK resembles Italy - in all the bad.

The economic and political decoupling of the EU was the most grievous mistake of a generation – of the century. Because after Brexit, the fact is that the UK remains very much within Europe, it hasn’t moved anywhere. The Union is - and will remain - the UK’s largest trading partner with a European single market of over 450 million consumers. It is estimated the UK lost over 4% of its GDP post-Brexit (some 40 billion pounds), personally I think the truth is closer to double that figure the Office for National Statistics quotes. And this figure does not take into account the billions of pounds spent by SMEs and large companies duplicating a bureacracy and registration system already in place with the EU. It also does not take into account the increase in taxes paid, for example, by my clients (from 19% to 24% tax rate) and no tax relief. This means all  this money (thousands of pounds per taxpayer) that would have otherwise stayed in the UK ends up in Spain, or elsewhere, making the UK poorer. 

And what did the UK get in exchange of losing well over 4%of its GDP to its major trading partners only 20 miles away? It got a trade deal with Australia, half a world away, that adds a whopping 0.08% GDP to the UK's coffers. With New Zealand it was paltry 0.03% GDP. I'm no economist, but that doesn't seem like a brilliant move to me.

In the private sector, where I've worked for all my life, the persons responsible for such a giant mistake would be held accountable and would have very serious consequences for their job prospects. There should be a national reckoning over this and the handful of Tory politicians that grossly misled the whole country should be held accountable for it. Remember that red bus driven by Bojo with the 350 million pounds a week (sic) that had to be transferred by the NHS to the EU? Where is all that money now? Surely the NHS staff must be highly paid, right? False. The harsh truth is that they are underpaid, overworked, and under a lot of stress. More than 40,000 nurses have left the NHS (over 11% of its workforce) during 2022 alone. It was all a pack of lies.

It was folly, and a huge historic mistake, to think the UK could go about on its own in this small intertwined world we all live in. Abandoning a single market of 450mn consumers that is literally sitting at is doorstep and its customs union, to which it had unfettered access of goods & services, in the hot pursuit of self-deluded dreams of grandeur, manifest destiny and self-sufficiency is bonkers, period.  Some (or many) Tory politicians need a reality check. They are totally dettached from reality and how the economy works, at least for the average joe. The UK needs the Union as much as the Union needs the UK.

Almost two years on from Brexit, we ought to think hard who has benefitted from it. As I pointed out in my articles and blog posts at the time, it most certainly wasn’t going to be the average person nor the country, that’s for sure. I'm surprised UK journalists haven't digged deeper on who financed - in a big way - the campaign to leave the EU *cough* bears&dragons *cough*. But then again large groups of tabloids and UK newspapers are owned by powerful affluent foreigners whose interests are aligned with leaving the EU. There were also serious vested interests in leaving the EU that grossly benefitted rival global superpowers as well as a small minority of uber wealthy UK individuals, with money tucked away in offshore tax havens, that wanted to escape all regulatory control from Brussels at the expense of the whole bloody country. Meanwhile, the small people, SMEs, and large companies suffer the brunt of the ongoing Brexit financial and trading debacle and no one is held accountable.

Brexit is an unmitigated disaster and there is no way to hide it.

You can go blue in the face arguing the opposite, but the facts and figures speak for themselves. Guess which is the only country out of the entire OECD (comprised by 38 countries) which is expected to grow at 0% in 2023? Yep, the UK. Its growth will flatline, the same as some politicians' electroencephalogram. There is only one other country that will fair worser with -8% (Russia), but that's only because everyone, and their mother, has imposed state-sanctions on them for waging their illegal war against Ukraine.

More and more people are waking up to the hard truth – Brexit was a mistake. The country, its people, were misled by the hubris of a handful of Tory politicians. Brexit does not favour the United Kingdom in any meaningful way; quite the opposite, it undermines it, it weakens its economy, diminishes its clout in the EU and worldwide, and makes the country overall less competitive.

When I worked in the UK in 2014, at the time it was Europe’s leading economy and the most stable democracy, the country all fellow European countries looked up at with respect and admiration as an example to follow. The UK was in fact one of the joint leaders of the EU, along with Germany and France.

Eight years on it's in shambles, its economy in tatters, its politicians a laughing stock worlwide, even its pension plans have taken a blow. We dodged a silver bullet a few weeks ago with a major pensions crisis (liability-driven investments). Let’s see how that pans out in the context of a sharp rise of interest rates.

The situation can be neatly summed up in our now ex-PM own words: “I cannot deliver on this mandate.” And not because she is incompetent – because she is not, and neither were the previous PMs, well, except Boris – it’s because the mandate in itself is stupid, Brexit is a dead end. You cannot curb and stomp off migration and at the same time foster a growing economy; it just doesn’t work like that, it’s incompatible. You need migration to keep the economy flowing, growing, to fill all those menial underpaid jobs UK youngsters frown upon. Tell me about it, I travelled to the UK for work in 2010 and lived there for several years, so I know first-hand how it works.

Brexit will continue to create nasty ripples that destabilize the country, its politics, and its economy. Because inherently, Brexit is flawed to the core, a glaring mistake that acts like a millstone around our necks, dragging us down with it. Reality clashes with people's desires.

And that is the problem when irresponsible populist carreer politicians, such as Nigel Farage and others, who appealed to people's emotions, low instincts and feelings instead of their minds on poll day. It's all just empty promises and fireworks, nothing is delivered. When one votes with the heart and not with his mind we face such tribulations. The truth is that the ruling party has shot itself on the foot, has placed the UK on its knees, and has greatly impoverished our country for generations.

Can anyone name one benefit of leaving the EU, please?

Brexit was a mistake, it's time people realize and accept it. Acceptance is the first step out of this mess we have gotten ourselves into.

Anticipated elections should be called.

Conclusion

I know how most people show a manifest disdain for history, but the fact of the matter is that human nature never changes, as classical Greeks always gently reminded us, and the past provides valuable insights for the present, and even for our future. Lessons we should not ignore. This whole conclusion is going to be pervaded by the idea of unity and the importance it holds, in the past, present, and future with historic examples. Please bear with me.

Alfred the Great, King of West Saxons, sowed the seeds and paved the way to unite all seven Anglo-Saxon kingdoms into one, creating what in time would be England. A nation that would one day rule the world. It was through unity this was achieved.

Fast-forward to 1707, the Act of the Union. The four great nations in our land would eventually agree to create Great Britain. And its ‘great’ because all four saw fit and proper to stand united. This is what allowed Britannia to rule the seas and most of the known world, for centuries.

Do you see a pattern? It’s called unity, working together towards a common goal that collectively makes us all stronger

Because of the unbridled hubris of one man, which I will not name, in a quest to retain power and control over the Conservative party, he called a EU Referendum which led us to this very day. Are we any better because of it? Are we stronger as a nation? Is the influence of the UK in the world and the EU any stronger or has it waned? How’s our economy faring? Are goods and services cheaper? Did we sign all those commercial treaties we were promised that would grant us huge commercial advantages?

I’ll leave it to the reader to draw his own conclusions.

I want to end, again, by stressing the importance of remaining united in today’s world with a final example. Our US cousins, who’ve dominated the world scene over the last 100 years, would have not achieved this if it had not been for the long term vision and dogged perseverance of one statesman who - against all odds - managed to keep his country united despite a fratricidal civil war that threatened to tear it apart. Through his actions and steadfast resolution, he resolutely managed to preserve the Union, which laid the groundwork for peace and prosperity in the US over the next two centuries. Without unity undergirding his every actions, both pre and post-Civil war (generously reconciling both sides as one), this would have never been achieved. Our cousins also have the word ‘united’ in their country’s name for something, same as us. We should never forget, nor take for granted, the meaning behind it.

We need less career politicians and more statesmen (or stateswomen).

There are bears and dragons out there only waiting for a chance to pounce on Western Democracies to further their imperialistic and autocratic agendas. They do everything they can, day in and day out, to undermine and weaken the resolve of our democracies, sowing dissent amongst us. Because they know (divide et impera) this is the key to our downfall and how they will succeed. They relish in financing and giving media platforms to narrow-minded nationalist politicians (read separatist) that in effect splinter our society, eroding our unity as a country. It's happened in Spain (Catalonia) and is happening right now with Scotland. Be smart, don't feed the dragon.

The gist of the matter is that the United Kingdom was stronger (and richer) as a Member state of the Union, which does not seek dominion over others and preserves each Member state’s idiosyncrasy, united but not absorbed.

As classic Greeks always pointed out: 'Unity makes strength'. When will we ever pay heed to their valuable history lesson which saved their fledgiling democracy from the jaws of Persian autocracy? Had Persian imperialism won, our world would now be a very different place. History repeats itself, over and over, because human nature never changes in an endless cycle.

 

“There is a remedy which ... would in a few years make all Europe ... free and ... happy. It is to re-create the European family, or as much of it as we can, and to provide it with a structure under which it can dwell in peace, in safety and in freedom. We must build a kind of United States of Europe... for those who will, for those who care.” – Sir Winston Churchill, University of Zurich speech (minute 15:50), 1946.

 

Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill (1874 – 1965). Born into a privileged aristocratic family,  he was an eminent British career officer, artist, historian, delicious eccentric and laureate writer – awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1953 “for his mastery of historical and biographical description as well as for brilliant oratory in defending exalted human values.” With dogged single-minded determination he defied alone, and managed to stave off, the tyrannical Nazi wave in WWII, unwaveringly assisted by our American cousins, which threatened to swallow whole the United Kingdom as it had already overrun most of Europe. He resolutely led the country out of its darkest hour, restored Europe's freedom, and laid the groundwork for peace and prosperity which all future generations have come to enjoy since and taken for granted, or so it would seem. As a keen-eyed historian, in line with fellow Founding Fathers Schuman and Monnet, he was quick to grasp and understand the importance of a united Europe to avoid repeat past mistakes which had resulted in two world wars that ravaged the continent. Consequently, he became a staunch defender of the idea of creating a single supranational political and economic entity that reconciled old foes and would act as a guarantor of peace & prosperity in the continent (in his own words, a “United States of Europe”); in time, this European fellowship would be known to us as the European Union. Churchill was instrumental, and the key driving force, behind the creation of the Council of Europe, a forerunner of what is now the European Union. He is credited as one of eleven Founding Fathers of the Union. Churchill incarnated like no other the best of British values. A child of the House of Commons, he was a proud servant of the State, never its master. A true statesman that would always put ahead of any consideration the best interests of our people, semper fidelis to Lincoln's Gettysburg ideals, by tearing down divisive walls and fostering at every opportunity union.

Simply put, he’s likely the finest British politician statesman ever to grace 10 Downing Street.

 

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Please note the information provided in this article is of general interest only and is not to be construed or intended as substitute for professional legal advice. This article may be posted freely in websites or other social media so long as the author is duly credited. Plagiarizing, whether in whole or in part, this article without crediting the author may result in criminal prosecution. Ní neart go cur le chéile. VOV.

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