and standby for today’s budget statement which will likely worsen the situation even more than it is.
How easily people forget just what sort of mess Hunt left the NHS in following his tenure as Health Secretary and the extent to which he cares not how the economy will now be left just to score political points over Labour when inevitably they have to deal with the mess after the next election.
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Yep - they’ll rely on the fiscal drag to postpone maximum pain into the next parliament.
The evidence of economic history is crystal clear: the Tories always mess up, and Labour always has to clear up the mess - but over recent decades has failed to reform the UK economy - and, crucially, the constitution and the media - to stop a right-controlled Tory party getting back in to mess up again.
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I don’t suppose this will interest anybody unless like me they’ve sadly had to work on legal/financial detail around the world - but I just wanted to to elaborate this point because, although hidden, it is huge. I first realised it when I had to read the Myanmar (Burma) Companies Act - only to see immediately that it was identical to UK company law from the early 20th century - complete with contemporary chauvinism (chairman, etc). I soon discovered that in many, many countries the basic legal/financial infrastructure - for the economy - was simply borrowed from the UK. Even where Brits were not colonisers you could see the influence - stemming I guess from the UK’s early development of capitalism - and throughout the world, in smaller countries, legislation is generally drafted in both their own language and English. We think of ‘the City’ as bankers and traders - but its own infrastructure of lawyers and corporate accountants and actuaries also served much of the world, largely because of these historical advantages.
They still do, of course - but it’s now clearly in decline.
OBR predicts little medium term difference in impact on growth between Trussonomics and Hunt’s Autumn statement measures today:
Currency and bond market response also a little negative so far. It’s a squib.
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@Omnisis poll on 17-22 November: Should the UK stay out or rejoin the EU?
Rejoin: 53% (+5)
Stay Out: 34% (-3)
Don’t Know: 13% (-2)
Don’t Knows Excluded:
Rejoin: 61% (+4)
Stay Out: 39% (-4)
How long can politicians and the media keep this question out of discussion?
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The IFS certainly believes that Brexit (and Truss’ Kamikwarzi budget) have… indeed continue to play a significant part in the worsening of the UK economy…
Hunt now seems to be leaning toward rejoining the SM - quite an opposition to his boss’ Brexit stance of course.
Also significant is that Sunak has now reportedly pulled the plug on the Ministerial daily round of TV interviews which have become somewhat of a joke - even the so called “friendly” stations and news anchors are becoming more intense with the questioning and exposing the lying cheating bastards for what they really are.
Sorry Graham, but can you explain to a thicko like me…
What difference does it make if ‘we’ rejoin the SM ? (Single Market ?)
There are quite a few (and growing) references - this is a quick one I found from The Guardian which is usually easy reading and there will be more.
and a more recent one from The Daily Vomit
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Don’t you have to apply to join the single market? Which if so, would the UK be accepted ,
Of course we will be accepted !
We are British you know !
Ha ha ha .
No longer, I am now Irish (and proud!)
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another useful reference
Yes, thanks Graham.
I can’t I imagine the UK accepting the free passage of people even though it would probably be to the UKs advantage.
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Leaving the EU but remaining in the single market and customs union, either through membership of the EEA or a more tailored relationship, would have been the ‘soft’ brexit that people actually voted for in 2016 (it was what the official ‘Leave’ campaign actually advocated). Nobody voted to be poorer. Unfortunately, the extreme right subsequently captured the Tory party and led the UK into hard brexit, Johnsonian amorality, Trussonomics, and now more austerity.
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I thought terms including a deal for mutual access with the single market was what they spent 4 years negotiating.
Apparently not.
This is Max’s view on the current UK Govt “thinking” on a Swiss style deal…
This is one commentators view expressed in the comments section of the video…
First, the EU has clearly stated in the past that they do not want another Swiss-style arrangement. They have many dozens of individual agreements, most with decapitation clauses, whereby one agreement is terminated, most of the other agreements are all terminated. Nontheless, there is a great deal of complexity in managing all the separate agreements. They have stated that there will be no more cherry picking in the future (this is before Brexiters tried just that).
Secondly, when Switzerland tried to impose restrictions on FoM, following a very narrow referendum outcome, the EU very (and I mean VERY) quickly froze Switzerland out of the Horizon programme. They were not messing about. Switzerland had to go back to the drawing board very quickly and was then readmitted to the Horizon programme provisionally. I cannot see the EU agreeing to a ‘quasi-freedom of movement’ arrangement. For one thing, that would stir up trouble with Switzerland - by suggesting there could be double standards - and secondly, they need to discourage the notion that you can pick and choose the 4 freedoms of the single market.
One of the things that has not often been explained is that the 4 freedoms are designed to ensure a level playing field. If you have freedom of capital (well, in fact, across the world, you generally find that this freedom exists - what governments do not want foreign investment, especially if it creates jobs and brings in tax revenue) unless you have freedom of movement, you can have larger corporations playing governments off each other - by threatening existing investment - or promising new investment. With FoM, these threats are less effective, since workers can simply move to where the jobs are - so less ability to play governments off each other. And this becomes even more evident in the context of services, where individuals are needed to actual do the ‘work’ or ‘provide the service’. FoM ensures that a company can provide service from a single point in its market without having duplication of services or service providers. It also forces companies to make business decisions based on business needs rather than on what benefits they can extract from different levels of government.
I should think that is a no basically.
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I doubt that the EU want another Switzerland-like deal, as I understand it that is completely bespoke and engenders considerable administrative burden on both sides.
It might be possible to join the single market - the slight problem is that there are only two routes presently recognised, either EEA membership via EFTA or via EU membership. I don’t think the EFTA nations would welcome us with open arms and EU membership is, for all that Brexit is a disaster, not something we should aspire to in the short or medium term.
I have no doubt that something bespoke could be done to allow us to join the Sm in our own right - perhaps Cameron’s “twin stream” EU could be dusted off and turned into an official way to be in the single market but not the EU.
In the very short term, lubricating the major sticking points - phytosanitary alignment, agreeing to track EU standards (presumably not difficult as I don’t think there has been wholesale separation yet anyway) would pave the way.
I think customs union membership should be straightforward enough though - there are models we can follow (eg Turkey) and the EU likes nothing more than a precident.
But no one should kid themselves that it could be done overnight.
Following a massive backlash from Brexiteers both in and outside of government it seems any plan to work towards a “Swiss Style Agreement” with the EU has been shelved. There may never have been a plan and it is possible it was just a kite flying exercise which is common with the Tories. Either way it means Rishi Sunak will face pressure from businesses in Britain to undo some of the damage of Brexit.
