An explanation for why British politics is in such a mess:
In 2016 Prime Minister David Cameron gave the right wing of the Tory Party what it wanted – a referendum on British membership of the EU. He expected the result to be an overwhelming vote to stay in the EU, because leaving was clearly such a bad idea. Tragically, however, this coincided with Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the opposition Labour Party. Corbyn – a fossilised teenager from the early 70s, a propagandist for Assad and Putin, and a conspiracy theorist – had opposed EU membership for decades. This meant that the Labour leadership failed to oppose Brexit, and that therefore no substantive criticism of this far right idea was made from the left. It also coincided with years of anti-migration rhetoric from all major English parties and from almost all media. Therefore 52% of people voted to leave the EU.
From that point on, Britain became ungovernable. This is because people had been promised things which were impossible – for instance, that immigration would be dramatically reduced while the economy would continue to grow. Or that British trade would increase while barriers were put up to trade with Britain’s neighbours and closest partners.
Those who promised to deliver these things were, by definition, liars and fantasists. Boris Johnson’s lies – about parties during lockdowns more than about more serious things – finally became too much for the electorate, and therefore for the Tory Party. So in came Truss, a fantasist like Johnson but less charismatic and much less intelligent. She radically cut taxes for the rich at a time of economic crisis, pretended there would be growth as fuel prices rocketed and trade with the world shrank, and implied that Britain could keep on borrowing money even after the huge debts incurred by Covid. The markets responded, the IMF rebuked Britain, people’s mortgages and debts shot up.
So she’s gone. Probably the Tories will lose the next election badly – though it’s still a while away. Labour under Keir Starmer will be more sensible, but won’t dare to explain that Brexit-related magical thinking is at the root of the problem. Therefore Britain will continue to become poorer and less relevant on the world stage.
(Scotland, by the way, didn’t vote for Brexit, and was left cold by both the Farage-Boris-Brexit phenomenon and the Corbyn phenomenon. That’s one reason why I hope for Scottish independence. Failing that, I hope the UK as a whole manages to grow out of this unpleasant myth-based stage of its political life. I am not optimistic, not for Britain or for the world. As our crisis grows to unbearable size, so we bury our heads in ideology and nightmare.)
