How Britain Destroyed Its Future— And What the World Should Learn From Its Lethal Mistakes
Image Credit: Amani A
Want to Know What Hate, Spite, Nationalism, and Big Lies Do to a Country? Take a Look at Brexit Britain in 2022.
by Umair Haque
My prediction was clear: “Brexit was already going to cost the average Brit an arm and a leg — about 10K per person, forever.” It wasn’t rocket science, after all, and I’m not a genius. Just a relatively good economist. And today? After Brexit? “British families are nearly £9,000 worse off than households in comparable countries due to a ‘toxic combination’ of stagnant growth and inequality, a report has found.”
I’m used to seeing my predictions come eerily true, from American collapse to climate catastrophe to the rise of the global far right and the undoing of democracy. Just another day on the job. But it’s funny to me to see a prediction like this coming true. What kind of idiots want to make themselves suddenly way, way poorer?
Right about now, Brexit is being revealed as a Big Lie, a con, a delusion. Don’t just pity Brits for their folly — everyone should learn from the mistake they made. First let me take you through a few of the highlights of what Brexit’s done to Britain — and then we’ll talk about the lessons for everyone.
Anyone and everyone sane predicted that Brexit would be an epic disaster. The idea of leaving the EU beggared belief. Why? For what reason? Why would you break up with your nearest trading partners, closest friends, and oldest allies? Not just amicably, but spitefully? What on earth led Brits to make this historic, immense mistake — which is going to destroy their futures for decades to come yet? I’ll come to that.
If you mention any of this to Brits today, though, on either side, you get a certain response. They get angry. “Let’s just get beyond it!” they cry, shout, hiss, scream. I’ve asked my friends, and I’m shocked at the anger of their response. Because you can’t just move beyond it. Brexit was a history-shaping decision, which irrevocably damaged Britain in unbelievable, surreal, irreversible ways — yet one, sadly, as we now know, built on a Trumpian series of Big Lies.
What were some of those Big Lies? Well, one was that Brits — and goods — would still enjoy easy freedom of movement to and from Europe. LOL…how? Britain wasn’t weren’t in the EU anymore, hello? Today, Brits are finding out the hard way — to travel in Spain, they need evidence of about $100 a day. Their main port is backed up for hours. Paperwork of all kinds is crushing businesses, to the extent that Britain’s largest wine importer just gave up, and set up shop in Europe instead.
A disaster. And that’s just the beginning.
Brexit was going to “level up” Britain. To where, exactly? Europe makes the world’s finest…cars, food, wine, clothes, and much, much more. There is no higher level. None. The world’s best clothes? Made in Italy and France. Food? Much the same. Cars? Germany. The list goes on and on and on, into infinity. Europe enjoys the world’s highest living standards by a very, very long way for a number of very real reasons, and one of those reasons is that it has focused its economies like a laser beam on making the highest quality stuff in the world.
Leveling up? So Britain went out and searched for “trade deals.” With a certain attitude of almost imperial hauteur. They will come to us. But whom, and for what? After all, Britain doesn’t make anything anymore. And so nobody came…for much of anything. The Brexit fantasyland of “leveling up” never materialized. The situation’s so bad that even America won’t sign a trade deal with Britain, because, well, what does it have to offer? The answer to that is: crickets. Nothing.
Then — and to an American, this is funny — it went hat in hand, begging for trade deals with American states, like Indiana. And it couldn’t even get many of those done. Because even individual American states are baffled by this situation. Britain wants to do a micro-trade deal with us? OK…I guess so. Here, have some corn. But what do we get in return. Crickets.
How did Brits get 10K poorer at lightspeed — in just a handful of years after Brexit? I just told you, but let me make it clearer. Breaking up with EU caused an economic calamity — one that the nation still doesn’t understand, because Britain is still living in the fools’ paradise of Brexit’s Big Lies. That economic calamity came from dramatically lower trade — imports from Europe are down by 25%. As a result, scores of businesses have closed, and unemployment is sure to rise systematically. Prices have skyrocketed — more than they have globally, because all of this has led to Brexflation.
People, meanwhile, are suffering of all kinds of European and even American businesses simply leaving, shuttering their doors because now operating in Britain is unprofitable. As an example of how bad it is, Britain doesn’t have a Gap anymore, because its executives can see the future, and understand that Brits are only going to get poorer. Scores of mainstay European businesses — H&M, Zara, and so on — have slimmed their operations down to the absolute bone, and taken all those jobs with them. High streets are places of boarded up stores, next to vape shops and betting parlors. It’s not good.
How do you get that much poorer, that fast? Higher prices, lower incomes, less employment, lower wages. Lost potential for everyone. I used to predict that Brexit would be something surreal, never before seen in modern history: the equivalent of a nation putting sanctions on itself — and that much has already vividly, visibly, sadly, idiotically come true. There’s simply no other way to get this poor — this fast.
And the even grimmer truth? Brits are only going to get poorer now. For a very, very long time. I’ll explain why in just a moment.