Whisper it, but it was the folly of Brexit that paved the way for Truss’s crazy libertarian zeal
Some “plan for growth”. Millions face futures they neither deserved nor were prepared for, so suddenly has disaster hit. Mortgage payers will be unexpectedly hammered. All homeowners face a sharp fall in house prices in which most of their wealth is held. Worse, those dependent on functioning public services and benefits confront privation and even destitution.
Compelled to find up to £40bn of spending cuts in November to pay for Liz Truss’s unwanted tax cuts, the Treasury has to cripple the state to restore financial credibility. Capital investment, the science budget, new schools and hospitals, uprating benefits and public sector wages in line with inflation – forget them all. Instead of a stimulus to growth, Britain faces intense economic and social dislocation and ongoing stagflation. Austerity is back, this time on an epic scale.
Whisper it – this is where Brexit has inexorably led. There is no Brexit that can work congruent with deeply held British values, beliefs and economic interests. A democratic vote has transmuted into a rightwing coup, culminating in a destructive libertarian programme, an attempt to shrink a state the right considers bloated, to eliminate the last remnants of regulation, to try to drive taxes down, however vital to sustain public services. All in the name of “liberating enterprise” and forcing “self-reliance” on what the Brexit right consider a lazy, cushioned workforce. The line from Brexit to last week’s debacle is straight and obvious.
The EU never ranked in the top 10 of voter concerns: it was an obsession of the British right who saw it as emblematic of “big state” regulation; worse, it was from abroad. Yes, the EU, in trying to create common product, service and professional standards
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