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THE CATASTROPHIC REAL IMPACT OF BEXIT Umair Haque: (How) Britain’s Collapse is a Warning to the World ... The Moral of Brexit Britain’s Descent into the Underworld of Modernity 
Image Credit: Nought Cuisine by Carlos Amato Original article: https://eand.co/how-britains-collapse-is-a-warning-to-the-world-85960c3eb59f Peter Burgess COMMENTARY Thank you, Umair, for penning this essay. I agree with you in almost everything you are saying here! I became an 'economic migrant' from the UK to North America in the mid 60s ... almost 60 years ago. Over the years I have been encouraged by some of the quite impressive economic performance of the UK. From my perspective, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher addressed some of the UK's economic malaise quite effectively and later PM Tony Blair had some success before his huge mis-step over Iraq ... but the last 20 years have been problematic. The economy became substantially more unequal because of what I refer to as 'financialization' of the economy, and this in turn resulted in an increasingly disgruntled populace embracing the (economically) stupid idea of Brexit. Everything being described by Umair seems real ... and very concerning. Is there anyone in the 'political class' ... left or right ... that has a clue about a way forward that would 'right the ship'. I took note that Umair considers Europe to be heading in much the same direction into what one might call the 'fantasy right' ... though about a decade behind. My impression is that the USA is also teetering on the brink of massive social discontent ... discontent that could manifest itself quite quickly and quite violently if some of the near mad hot-heads manage to get just a little bit more political power. The USA 'dodged a bullet' and avoided a red wave (that is a Republican wave) in the recent November 2022 midterm election, but Biden's party which has been surprisingly successful in many ways in spite its slim majority during the last two years is not very popular. This is insane ... but insanity gets to be popular on top of most social media platforms ... and that is what is starting to drive anything and everything. I am scared stiff. Peter Burgess | ||
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(How) Britain’s Collapse is a Warning to the World
The Moral of Brexit Britain’s Descent into the Underworld of Modernity Written by Umair Haque Dec 15rd , 2022 In my last essay about Britain, I catalogued the shocking privations that Brits are going through — it’s descent into neo Dickensian poverty. This is what becoming a failed state is. This time, though, I want to discuss the moral of the story: modern day Britain is a warning to the world. Of just how severely, swiftly, and shockingly a society can fail — how fast and hard it can all come crashing down. But is the world learning that lesson? Particularly Europe, which is a decade or so behind Britain, in its dalliance with the fanatical, extreme right? Is the future of Europe — and America — Britain? This is a serious warning, because, well, this is where flirting with the fanatical, far right ends. The shocking thing about Britain today isn’t just its absolutely catastrophic list of self-made problems. But let’s begin there, and then I’ll come back to the really shocking part. How hard and fast can a society fail? Consider Britain’s list of self-inflicted wounds. It’s economy’s been shattered — the only rich country to still be below pre-pandemic levels, and that’s going to persist through much of the decade, since, well, now it’s in recession. 20% of kids in London are going hungry, millions are shivering in the cold, you can’t get antibiotics, crime is spiking to the point that it’s now called “Lawless London.” And that’s just the beginning. None of Britain’s fundamental systems or institutions work anymore. None of them. Healthcare? The NHS has a waiting list longer than entire small countries — seven million people and counting. Chemotherapy? LOL — good luck getting a doctor’s appointment. But odds are you won’t get that far, because when you call the emergency services, there’s a pretty good chance they’ll tell you, sorry, no ambulances, take a taxi. Take a taxi? Grandma’s having a heart attack, hello. Law and order? Britain’s become a dangerous place to be, stabbings and violent crime skyrocketing. Maybe that’s because the government itself is breaking international law, so, well, why not just follow the example. Money? Finances? The average Brit has maybe a week’s worth of expenses in their bank accounts — just $500. Education? Schools are warning that they’re about to run out of money, and who knows what happens then. Schools. In a rich country? Is it still one? How about the economy? Well, we’ll come back to that one, because the truth is that Britain’s searching desperately for an economy, while the old pre-Brexit one is unravelling like a thread of yarn pulled apart by a raging bull. And meanwhile, the BBC — once the world’s finest broadcaster, it’s pre-eminent media institution, bar none — doesn’t seem interested in highlighting or explaining any of this to people, this incredibly, catastrophically long list of social problems. It just pretends like none of this is really happening, and that because it’s overrun now by American style talking heads — “surrogates” for what’s become a lunatic politics. Nothing in Britain works, from healthcare to education to finances to the economy to transportation. Hence, what’s prosaically called a “winter of discontent,” where everyone from paramedics to nurses to train drivers are going on strike. They’re striking precisely because they’re working in broken systems, underpaid into poverty, overworked to the bone, and then having to try to manage issues like not having enough antibiotics to give kids or trains to run on time. The stress of it is shattering. Who wants to spend their life like that? You see, this is what it means to be a failed state: when a society’s unable to provide basic goods to people — so much so that more or less the entire public sector throws in the towel, and goes on strike, in despair that it can’t make ends meet, can’t do its job, because, well, nobody can really do the job of making broken systems work. But, like I said, none of that’s the shocking part. The really shocking part is that…the government doesn’t care. It’s absolutely, completely, utterly, totally, scandalous to someone like me — an observer, a long-time one, of socioeconomics around the world. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like it. Ever. The government appears…not to care…about a single thing on Britain’s catastrophic, devastating, endless list of problems. I mean that literally. It has nothing to say about most of the stuff above. Ask it, and you’ll maybe get some kind of nonsensical boilerplate response, that literally makes no sense. Its officials don’t even bother discussing the problems above as problems. Kids can’t get antibiotics, say pharmacists, doctors, nurses, parents, everyone. There’s no antibiotics shortage, says the government, beaming. Hey — we can’t do our jobs, say nurses, train drivers, doctors, paramedics. Pindrop silence. Do you realize that people can’t get ambulances so they are literally resorting to driving their dying relatives to the hospital strapped to planks? Pindrop…silence. The government literally doesn’t care about a single thing on Britain’s list of problems. I mean that, again, literally. Schoolmasters, desperate, keep shouting, to anyone who’ll listen, that they’re about to literally run out of money. Pindrop silence. Every quarter, the trade statistics and economic numbers are not just worse, not even just alarmingly worse, but devastatingly so — the economy’s contracting like it’s having a heart attack, because it is, because trade with Europe is off by 15–40% depending on how you count it, and that was Britain’s largest supplier and buyer. Response? Pindrop silence. Kids are dying of a preventable childhood illness…a simple goddamned infection…strep throat. What does the government have to say about it? Nothing. The choice between “eat and heat” is so commonplace that it’s literally been reduced to just that, a turn of phrase. Response from the government? Pindrop silence. Think of how insane, how crazy, how baffling, how shocking that really is for a moment. Let me say it again, because I think that many people, especially Brits, don’t fully grasp this part. As an economist? A long-time commentator on socioeconomics around the world? have never seen anything like this. I have never seen anything like this. Anywhere. Ever. Period. Full stop. Even in poor countries, for a government to simply shrug, and offer pindrop silence, in a time of ruin? Never seen it happen. Not just me — I challenge you to find a single economist or observer who has run across such a situation. Even in poor countries, when times are this bad, governments make some kind of effort. Even if it’s just paying lip service. Even if it’s just offering some kind of moral support, because, well, poor countries are poor. Even if it’s just saying the right thing, because, yes, that matters too. But a government that just…in the face of endless catastrophe, devastation, ruin, and I mean those words in very real terms, from kids dying because they can’t get antibiotics, to elderly people shivering and freezing to death, to strapping grandma to a plank and putting her in your van because, well, there are no ambulances…just says, does, offers, imagines, proposes… Nothing? I have never seen anything like it. That’s a lot of italics, because I really want you to understand how abnormal this is. Let’s take some examples of disasters and catastrophes that plunged people into poverty and despair. In Pakistan, half the country recently flooded after a mega-monsoon. Did the government…say nothing…do nothing…offer nothing…was there just this…deafening silence? Of course not. Even plenty of Pakistanis will bitterly complain it didn’t do enough, but there was Pakistan’s Climate Change Minister, literally leading the negotiations to establish, for the first time in history, reparations for climate catastrophes from rich nations to poor ones. So that in the future, it can do more. That’s far from doing nothing. Pakistan is one of the world’s poorest nations. And in the face of disaster, even it manages to do something. That is some small measure of how shocking this situation really is. It is special. It’s singular. It’s almost alone in modern history, I think. No matter how I wrack my brain, I simply can’t come up with another example of a veritable sea of disasters — and the only thing a government has to offer is a deafening silence. And yet even that barely begins to capture the scale and scope of this…insane, lunatic, descent into the underworld Britain’s having. You see, it’s not just the government. It’s the opposition, too. Now, the opposition doesn’t do the deafening silence thing. It’ll talk, sometimes, about some of the problems above. And then it’s leader, Keir Starmer, will do something flatly incredible. He’ll gaslight the nation, just as badly as the government. Oh, our economy’s cratered? It’s shrinking, and it’s going to shrink for who knows how long, alone among much of the world, and maybe that’ll last most of the decade, as we adjust to a new, far smaller, far poorer, post-Brexit Britain. Never mind! We’re not going to renegotiate with Europe. Sorry, no Swiss style deal here. Brexit means Brexit! What’s that? A majority of Brits, growing every day, understands now that it was a colossal, terrible, historic mistake? Never mind them! Brexit is who I’m really serving. This is the opposition. And while it might, like I said, even discuss some of that incredible list of problems once in a while, it’s “solutions” are whatever lies beyond laughable. What is that? Nauseatingly stupid? Painfully obtuse? Stomach-clutchingly backwards? So, for example, if Brexit destroyed the economy, how can pursuing it fix anything? Hello, Sir Kier, Planet Earth calling — how can doubling down on the thing that caused a problem fix it? For healthcare, for schools, transport, doctors, nurses, paramedics, drivers — remember the list of everyone on strike? What does Starmer’s Labour Party — this is their party, remember, the first party in the modern world for working people — offer? Nothing. Maybe, if you’re lucky, and you like nonsense, you can delve into the oppositions’s plans. Be my guest and waste your time, because you’ll hear words like “devolution” and “decentralization,” all of which are completely meaningless. Why is that? The problem inside the problem of Britain becoming a failed state is lethally simple. Money. Remember the schoolmasters? They’re running out of it. Devolve all the power to them you like, hell, let them write the entire curriculum themselves — but does it matter if they don’t have a school? Can’t afford heating? Pens? Notebooks? Serving…lunch? Of course not. Remember the nurses? Go ahead and give them the power doctors have, to prescribe medications, while doctors are told to prescribe heating — what difference does it make if there aren’t enough antibiotics? Tests? Masks? Remember the paramedics? Go ahead and give them the power to, I don’t know, take the emergency calls themselves, and cut out the middleman. What are they going to drive, rickshaws? Tricycles? Because the problem is there aren’t enough ambulances and drivers. Maybe you see my point. The problem inside the problem of Britain becoming a failed state is this. Brexit has wrecked it, for good. Its economy is shrinking now, rapidly, and it’s going to keep shrinking — until at last a new post-Brexit “equilibrium” is reached. Equilibrium: what kinds of goods are available, and at what prices, meaning also what kinds of jobs are available, and at what wages. Smaller economy? Less of all that. There’s another six letter word for Brexit, only it’s much more accurate. P-O-V-E-R-TY. What happens as a knock on effect of an economy shrinking towards a new-post Brexit equilibrium? That’s right, there’s less in the public purse. That means a far, far smaller set of public goods and services. Kiss the NHS goodbye, and say hello to American style “healthcare,” which nobody should wish on their worst enemy. Those ambulance shortages? They’re not temporary, they’re permanent, because, well, this is what Brexit did. Life is not going to be the same again. Britain is now poorer. Individually, households are, at last, count, already $10K worse off than their European cousins. Businesses have been wrecked, and Britain’s once famous high streets are shuttering their doors. But fiscally is the biggie — a smaller economy, a poorer country, also can’t afford the same levels of public goods, like ambulances, antibiotics, doctor’s appointments, nurses, schools, trains. Shudder. See how incredibly bad this is? And I guess that explains the deafening silence, too. Because, well, what would you say? Imagine that you were the British government. And you really fanatically believed in all the Brexiteering nonsense, to this very day. One day, shortly, the whole world was going to come knocking at your door for trade deals, and with that, you’d have the fiscal balances to provide people functional levels of heating, ambulances, medicine, schools, transport again — only, oh wait, you’re a net importer, not an exporter, so what is it the world’s supposedly rushing eagerly to you for? Never mind. Imagine you still really believed it. The Big Lies, the fairy tales, the arrant nonsense. What would you do, as your country descended into Dickensian poverty? Well, I guess maybe you’d say nothing, because, hey, salvation’s on the way. It’s got to be, right? The plan’s got to work! Never mind…reality. The bitter, grim reality that everyone sane predicted — from economic implosion, to its consequence, fiscal depletion, the wreckage of public services, carnage of household finances, the utter implosion of living standards, the rapid loss of a future — materializing before your very eyes? I imagine you’d have to pretend none of it was happening. Hence…pindrop silence. From the government, and from the opposition, just plain lunacy — the idea that somehow pursuing Brexit to the marrow of the rotten bone is going to somehow magically conjure ambulances from thin air. Let me now tell you the moral of the story. It can’t be done. You see, Brexit was a con. Of a certain kind. A magic trick, it was said, was going to become real. Hate, xenophobia, rage, and spite — they were going to Make Britain Great. They were going to conjure things like ambulances and medicines and hospitals and schools, doctors and nurses and drivers, paramedics and teachers. From the dull, ignorant lead of xenophobia and the rotten, shrieking zombie carcass of spite and hate, were going to magically be conjured up the shining and noble things of a functioning society, somehow, in abundance, for all. Perhaps you see how fantastically, fatally stupid the con really was. Or believing in it, at any rate? How can you…conjure…ambulances…out of hate? How can you magically just — poof — create riches from…ignorance? Can you really just furrow your brow, strain mightily, and xenophobia your way to better schools and hospitals? Has anyone in history ever seen a slur, an insult, at the hands of a stupid, vicious bully…magically create an economy out of thin air? Has anyone even seen hate and spite work as wizardry? What is this, a fairy tale? For idiots? It always, my friend. It always was. And that’s the warning. And people need to heed it. You see, right about now, Europe’s about a decade behind Britain. It’s dallying with the far right, like it’s having a thrilling new affair with a pretty young thing, cheating on its boring, respectable, predictable partner, social democracy. I get it. We all do. The seductive allure of fascism in times like these. Hard times, tough times. Blame it on those people. They’re the ones who corrupted and corroded our society from within. Get them. Cleanse them away. And then things will — magically, there, there child, this is wizardry, you see — get better. Britain tells us that it doesn’t work. The whole idea is a sham and a lie. You can’t conjure things like medicine and heating and energy and hospitals and ambulances and schools and money and democracy — the very things Britain desperately now needs, but doesn’t have — from hate and spite and rage and xenophobia. What can you conjure from hate and spite? Nothing, is the answer to that question, except more of the same. The magic trick, like all magic tricks, is doomed to fail, because in this mundane world, well, there’s no such thing as wizardry. There’s no black magic, no white magic, and certainly magic of the even more fantastical kind — that hate is going to — poof — magically make an ambulance appear when your grandpa needs it most. Wrong. What do hate and spite do? They destroy. Where will Europe’s dalliance with the far right ends, if the affair’s pursued? With the betrayal of social democracy. Europe’s nascent far right parties will do exactly what Britain’s did — collude to undermine the EU, take a wrecking ball to it, crow about that as a history-defining accomplishment, while their very own societies simply fall into the precise same list of devastating problems Britain now has, because, well, the far right can’t manage something as simple as a rally without violence, usually, so good luck entrusting a country to it. The world should heed Britain’s lesson, the warning in its shocking, smoldering, self-made collapse. But most of all, Europe must learn it. That’s ironic, because right about now, Europeans laugh at Britain, and think, “but we’re not that stupid.” Ah, my friends. And yet there they are, flirting with that pretty young thing, fascism, a little more openly, proudly, shamelessly every day. Britain tells us where it ends. All of it. The downward spiral that happens when a country gives in, at last, to hate and spite and xenophobia. What are those things? They’re forms of ignorance. And perhaps the most basic kind of ignorance is not understanding, knowing, getting, that there’s no such thing as magic. No, you can’t magically make an ambulance suddenly appear through the sheer concentrated power of hate. You can’t create a goddamned thing with it, not a single one. You can destroy a lot, though — like one of the world’s richest and most powerful countries, until not so long ago. Just ask Britain. Not its government, though, because all you’ll get from those dolts is a deafning, pindrop silence. Ask its people, who are finding out the hard way, that magic doesn’t exist. Umair December 2022
| The text being discussed is available at | https://eand.co/how-britains-collapse-is-a-warning-to-the-world-85960c3eb59f and |