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‘Never underestimate the power of ignorance.” I came across this thought while looking for something to watch late at night after the television news on the horrors in Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan and the Los Angeles fires.
The quote comes from an old episode of my friend Paul Whitehouse’s The Fast Show. It applies, among many other things, to the background to the re-election of the criminal Donald Trump, and the continuing damage being wrought upon itself by a British electorate, 37% of whom voted, in frustration at other economic and social problems, for Brexit. With few exceptions they did not know what they were letting themselves in for; but they do now.
Now, I did not get where I am today by reading Trump’s mind or forecasting what he is going to do on day one after his inauguration on Monday. But to quote a recent motion picture it is hardly going to be A Quiet Place: Day One.
All these threats about retaking the Panama Canal, making Canada into the 51st state and taking over Greenland, may, one hopes, turn out to be fantasies. But for a Nato country, the United States, to invade a Nato territory, Greenland, would be something else.
We know what Trump and his (current) accomplice Elon Musk think of checks and balances. One is reminded of Franklin D Roosevelt’s re-election speech in 1936 when he said: “We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace – business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism … They had begun to consider the government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that government by organised money is just as dangerous as government by organised mob.”
Apparently Musk does not wish to stop there. He reportedly wants to unseat Keir Starmer and “liberate” Britain from “its tyrannical government”.
Now, our government is certainly up against it economically, but, despite my criticisms of the way Rachel Reeves has gone about her chancellorship, I think there is a certain amount of hysteria in the air when it comes to recent reporting. In modern globalised financial markets, most leading economies have been affected, when it comes to government borrowing, by the repercussions of panic in the bond market, but the idea that the UK should be considering further cuts in public spending at a time like this is dangerous.
Comparisons have been made between Reeves’s recent trip to China and 1976, when chancellor Denis Healey had to “turn back at the airport” with the pound under pressure instead of flying to Manila for an IMF meeting. Whether Reeves should have been cultivating Chinese investment is a moot point; these are deep waters. But there was a serious crisis in 1976, when inflation was running close to 25%. The present inflation rate of 2.5% is hardly in the same league. None the less, demand in the economy is weak, and the last thing we need are further cuts when the impact of austerity is all around us. If anything, we need lower interest rates.
But we certainly need growth, and it is about time the prime minister and chancellor recognised that their “red lines” approach to the EU – that is, no return to the customs union or single market – is counterproductive and actually inhibiting the achievement of their growth effort.
With further enlargement of the EU on the cards, not least with regard to Ukraine, Andrew Duff, a former member of the European Parliament and now senior fellow at the European Policy Centre, points out there are potential opportunities for improving trade and growth through enlargement, just as there were with the original efforts to build the single market. (By the way, it would be strange for the UK to support the entry of Ukraine to the EU while remaining outside itself!)
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Which brings us to the obvious problem of fear of the inappropriately named Reform party, whose leaders seem to worship Trump and Musk, whatever the latter thinks of them.
These are the people who gave the country Brexit, with all manner of misleading promises about sovereignty and regaining control. They claim to be devout patriots while accepting funds from anywhere. They have actually worked against the national interest by departing from our nearest, largest and most important market, with dramatically bad effect on our trade, standard of living and, yes, economic growth.
Far from finding benefits by “freeing” us from Brussels bureaucracy they have superimposed a lot more bureaucracy: just ask any trader or businessperson how they feel.
Over the years the British people have changed their minds many times about Europe. Opinion polls show that they are ready to do that again – and not before time.
