UK Economy Strong: Really?

Constantly we hear from government ministers that the UK has a strong economy, but yesterday Sir Vince Cable, famous for predicting the Crash, was worried. He rightly points out that very little new wealth is being created and the economy is now being sustained by record levels of consumer borrowing. An economy driven by borrowing can never be described as strong, any more than a family who splash out on homes and cars and jet set holidays, all on borrowed money, can ever be described as rich.

So with an economy which at the very least should be marked as vulnerable, we are set on a project that, whatever sunlit uplands may benefit the next generation at some point in the future, or even the one after that, in the medium term offers unwelcome economic shocks one upon another.

For it is now abundantly clear to all, including the Brexit hard liners whose vanity project has embarked this country on its worst course since the industrial revolution, that leaving the EU is a process of such complexity that we even have to negotiate that our air space remains open to civil aircraft and our nuclear power stations continue to produce electricity.

We have to negotiate with everybody across the world, including the United States, that the existing trading relationships we already have can be continued after we leave the EU, because the legal framework for everything comes not from the UK but from the EU, of which we are an indivisible part, but from which we are now busting free. Next we have to negotiate new trade deals with each country for the future. Those deals will take years not months and will have to get through the US Congress, and parliaments of one kind and another all over the place. And all of that just to get us on a par with where we are now.

Why? Because a bunch of con artists made out, they had never bothered to look into the details of what the legal framework of EU membership actually meant and how it engaged every nook and cranny of national life, that we could just walk out, be better off and have loads of cash to spend each week on the NHS. So people voted for it. But it was never there and now we are beginning to discover what actually is there, it is as plain as a pikestaff that people would not have voted the way they did in large enough numbers to give this misguided project legs. So the mandate was fraudulent and when it comes to the test, will be found to be not there either. As the coming months will slowly reveal.

The final shape of Brexit will be very different to the jolly off we go, promoted by ideologues who should have known better. The three top Brexiteers in the government, Fox, Davis and Boris are at this moment scattered across the world trying to fix things and the fourth, Michael Gove, has become the surprising chief pragmatist in a Cabinet echoing to the shrill cries of an unruly classroom, ignoring Teacher’s calls to order. But in the end it will not be ideology which will drive the Brexit bargain, if indeed it ever happens. It will be hard economics, jobs, living standards and common sense.

Ideology will not be allowed in the room. The British people are getting real.