It’s ‘BAD’: Brexit Affliction Denial

It’s BAD, really BAD – we’re talking about Brexit Affliction Denial.

The 2024 UK elections have witnessed the disturbing political denial of one of the most calamitous acts of national self-harm to have taken place in a western democracy. The Conservative and Labour parties competed over who can say the least about Brexit – it was the dullest 0-0 draw in the history of electoral contest. The Liberal Democrats once made re-joining the EU a key part of their electoral platform, but this time round, they kept it very low key indeed (See Note 1).

With neither the Conservatives nor Labour prepared to address the many problems created by Brexit, one wonders if anything will ever be done about them by those in power. Worse still, in not speaking out about the severe damages it caused, they have allowed those who thrive on peddling Brexit delusions to carry on with their lies and misinformation.

Perhaps politicians are unduly worried that being honest about Brexit would lose them support. But as of May 2024, just 31% of people in Great Britain thought it was right to leave the EU, while 55% thought the decision was wrong [https://www.statista.com/statistics/987347/brexit-opinion-poll/]. According to an Opinium poll taken at the end of 2023, only 10% of those surveyed believed leaving the EU had helped their personal financial situation, while 35% said it had been bad for their finances; 9% believed Brexit had been good for the NHS, and 47% were convinced it had a negative impact on the health service; and barely 7% thought it had helped keep prices low in UK shops, compared with 63% believing it was a significant factor in both the ongoing cost of living crisis and in fuelling inflation. [https://www.euronews.com/2023/12/31/has-brexit-been-a-failure-a-majority-of-brits-think-so]

And it's not just a matter of subjective views. Objective analysis of the impact of the trade barriers which Brexit has landed the UK with in doing business with the EU, shows that the UK exports were £23billion down each quarter compared with its earnings had it stayed in the EU – a GDP reduction of 4-5% [https://www.cer.eu/insights/brexit-four-years-answers-two-trade-paradoxes]. According to a detailed study by Cambridge Econometrics, as a result of Brexit, the average Briton was nearly £2,000 worse off in 2023, and reduced export opportunities meant there were nearly two million fewer jobs overall in the UK [https://www.london.gov.uk/new-report-reveals-uk-economy-almost-ps140billion-smaller-because-brexit].

In terms of business investment, which is vital for economic health, researchers at the Bank of England, using a large survey of business in the UK, estimated that it was 23% lower than it would have been in 2020/21 due to Brexit [https://www.economicsobservatory.com/how-has-brexit-affected-business-investment-in-the-uk]. In Scotland, it was found that as food price inflation reached a 45-year high, Brexit was responsible for a third of that rise [https://www.gov.scot/news/counting-the-impact-of-brexit/]. In Wales, the overall loss to the Welsh budget amounted to over £1billion [https://www.gov.wales/written-statement-loss-funding-wales-result-uk-governments-arrangements-replacement-eu-funding].

As for the wild claims about Brexit was needed to stop people trying to come to settle in the UK, before Brexit when the UK was part of an EU scheme which ensured unauthorised migrants to the UK could be returned to the first safe EU country they had entered, there was not one case of small boat crossing to the UK with asylum seekers. After Brexit, the UK severed cooperation with the EU, and refugees desperate to get to the UK had no choice but to risk their lives to get across by sea. The numbers then grew from the low hundreds in 2018 to tens of thousands in 2023 [https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/sep/15/small-boats-industry-science-brexit-made-our-lives-worse].

There are some who cling to their beliefs that Brexit has enabled the UK to do things like rolling out the Covid vaccine quickly, but that was something the UK could actually have done as a member of the EU. Then there are claims about the odd trade deals the UK has made on its own without having to go through the EU, but the tiny gains these brought pale into insignificance compared with the substantial trade that had been lost with our former EU partners, and they have come with having to make considerable concessions that we would not even have to contemplate as part of the much more powerful EU negotiating bloc.

The ultimate indictment of Brexit Affliction Denial comes from the fact that across Europe, the previously vocal EU-sceptics – in France, Italy, the Netherlands, etc – have all stopped advocating pulling their country out of the union. They know how bad it is.

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Note 1: The SNP having to only think about voters in anti-Brexit Scotland, and the Greens with a chance of winning in just a few pro-EU areas, both talked about reconnecting with the EU; while Reform (formerly known as the Brexit Party) simply doubled-down with more fabrications about the wonderful life that would come from being even more anti-Europe, anti-immigration, and anti-minorities.

What Have the Privatisers Ever Done for Us?

For decades now the Thatcherite mantra has kept going: “If you bring in the private sector, things will get so much better”. Some people still believe that. And there are politicians who, finding themselves constrained by the state of public finances, think the private sector may give them a way out. 

So for the benefit of all who pine for private sector salvation, let us recap on just what handing public money and control over to private companies has done for us.

Once the national assets we used to own have been sold off cheaply to private firms, those firms gain from the rising value of the assets in years to come, and the country is left with much depleted capital resources.

With vital services they can charge for, private firms will focus on making a profit out of us and pay billions in dividends to their shareholders; and whenever it proves difficult to make enough money, they call for support and demand billions more in subsidies from the public purse. 

When things go wrong, we can’t hold the government to account because they say it’s not a matter for them, but for the private company in charge; and the private company refuses to disclose anything on the grounds that their business activities are protected by commercial confidentiality. If we nonetheless press for public action against them, they hold us to ransom by saying that if they were not left to get on with things as they see fit, they could step away and leave us with no service at all.

For any of us who can’t pay the escalating prices they ask for, they threaten to cut off the service in question, regardless of how essential it is.

Let them … 

·      take charge of water, and they leak sewage into rivers and beaches; and where disease causing parasites are found in the water they are supposed to make safe to drink, they blame it on rising temperature.

·      take charge of our country’s information technology infrastructure, and the rolling out of a reliable fibre optic network for broadband communications is repeatedly delayed, especially in our rural (not-so-profitable for them) areas.

·      take charge of trains and buses, and services routinely run late and many routes get cut altogether.

·      take charge of energy, and they will take no notice of what people can actually afford, and leave it to the government to use public money to bail out any cost-of-living problems, while keeping them in profit.

·      take charge of schools, and they remove requirements for teaching qualifications so they can pay staff less, while they push up their own exorbitant salaries.

With PFI (private finance initiative), they build facilities which they own and we pay ever-rising rent and assorted fees to them on their terms, as we cannot afford not to have access to those facilities on which crucial public services rely.

With competitive tendering, they bid to deliver public services at a cheaper rate by reducing service quality, making people redundant, and cutting the pay of many of the remaining workers; and next time round they bid at a higher rate when the public sector team has been disbanded.

Of course, some private sector firms have helped to improve the provision of public services. But there are many cases of improvement which have not required any private sector input at all. The key to improvement is to combine effective public accountability, stakeholder challenge, and citizen involvement in quality control. The height of folly is to assume private companies will put public wellbeing above their own financial interests.