Politics: last chance saloon
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Brexit wasn't enough to fix Britain
I don’t get on particularly well with hardcore Brexiteers because I’m not going to say it’s a roaring success and I won’t play rhetorical games to gloss over the economic damage Johnson's deal has caused.
But then the one thing I was consistent about in my campaign writing was Brexit would come at a cost in terms of trade and the best case scenario was that it would make little overall difference to trade. Towards the end of the Article 50 era, I’d lowered my expectations of Brexit. I was so disillusioned with politics and the ability of our politics to deliver change for the better that I considered Brexit more of a moonshot.
I would, however, qualify that by saying that Brexit was never an economic venture. It was for the “free trade” ERG but its origins are rooted in the constitutional question of who governs us – and that questions is not yet full resolved.
Since Brexit, the groupthink in the Westminster bubble is that Brexit has divided the country. To be more precise, it has clarified and exposed existing social divisions. That, I think, needed to happen. At least now we all know where we stand. It’s exposed the Labour party in full and we can now drop any pretence that it represents the working class. Labour’s problems were not solved by ousting Jeremey Corbyn. It has more fundamental problems.
As to the Tories, Brexit only momentarily gave the party a sense of purpose but when it comes to delivering for the people, the cupboard is bare. They have only gimmicks and slogans. Levelling up was a ticket to nowhere, and Net Zero stands to do more harm to the economy than even the hardest of Brexits. All those coal-fired power stations we blew up… it turns out they were quite important.
In order for Brexit to mean anything Britain needs to shake off EU/Blair inspired social democracy. Brexit makes that easier to do, but we first need a government and a PM that wants to do it. And that isn’t Boris Johnson – who has cemented his reputation as Fat Blair. But Boris Johnson isn’t really the problem. Johnson is just the figurehead for a failing and decrepit political establishment. Economic revival isn’t possible without major political renewal. There was a slim chance that Brexit might achieve that had there been any sort of plan, but hopes are now fading.
As to uniting the country, this is all but impossible. The latest groupthink in Wesminster has it that, thanks to Brexit, Britain is more at ease with high levels of immigration now we’ve supposedly taken control of it. That’s not what I’m seeing and I don’t trust the polling. We clearly haven’t got grip on illegal immigration and the latest ruling from the ECHR is a reminder that the British government refuses to assert its sovereignty.
Dominic Cummings congratulates himself and Brexit for having lanced the boil of the “revolt on the right” but it’s still early days. Brexit has deprived UKIP and the Brexit Party offshoot of their primary grievance and their main platform, but immigration is coming back to the fore. There are half a dozen small anti-immigration parties and sooner or later one of them is going to get organised. I’d doesn’t manifest on Twitter or Facebook due to censorship, but the sentiment on the right is now darker than it was before Brexit. Patience is running out.
Perhaps the most malign aspect of the EU was the single market and freedom of movement which basically allowed business to run on a JIT basis, treating workers as an infinitely replaceable commodity. That model is the EU’s lasting legacy in Britain. Even now the prevailing mindset looks to immigration to full labour and skills gaps. The NHS, better than anything else, illustrates this. About 40 percent of the NHS’s 123,000 doctors are from minority backgrounds, compared with approximately 13.8 percent of the general population. We continue to use immigration as a sticking plaster for structural problems in the economy. That isn’t going to be solved without a fundamental shake up of higher education and the welfare state. Something else the Tories have failed to deliver.
Fundamentally, Britain is held hostage to its intellectually exhausted establishment and its sclerotic politics. Brexit wasn’t enough to change that. Respective left wing blobs have a strangle hold over the institutions and our politicians don’t disagree with them sufficiently to do anything about it. Eco activists are calling the shots on energy policy, education is a lost cause, the NHS unreformable and foreign judges have more power over immigration policy than the voters. “Civil society” in Westminster is made up of identikit drones marinated in diversity and inclusion dogma, eco-fanaticism, human rights (for criminals and immigrant only), and open borders ideology. Voters don’t get a look in.
This is partly to do with a demoralised and supine electoral who generally can’t be arsed to do politics and will do anything for an easy life. I sometimes wish I could join them because most of the time the hassle isn’t worth it. Perhaps this winter when voters are going without heating and can’t afford to get to work they might start paying attention. Political gimmicks and handouts aren’t going to fix Britain. The people have to take back control because politicians aren’t going to.
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on behalf of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) both at Henleaze Business Centre, 13 Harbury Road , Henleaze, Bristol, BS9 4PN