Think Greek: It might not be ok

Optimists who assume Britain will survive a No Deal Brexit should look to Greece for the effects of irresponsible politics, writes Brian Wilson

Greece will next week exit the European Stability Mechanism after eight years of receiving massive payments to relieve chronic burdens caused by spending more than it earned.

It is unlikely this milestone will be greeted with much dancing in the tavernas. Greece’s living standards and public services remain far below pre-crisis levels and nobody expects significant improvement for many years to come.

I was in Athens this week and symptoms of near-catastrophe were abundant – great expanses of boarded up businesses, halffinished buildings, crumbling infrastructure.

Not all of the legacies are visible. Around half a million Greeks emigrated during the early years of the crisis – most of them young and well qualified with transportable skills. A generation of the country’s brightest and best has been lost.

Austerity on a scale beyond our imaginings have left Greek welfare support as a safety net for the most needy. Tax rises have sent businesses fleeing to more benign jurisdictions, particularly Bulgaria. The IMF thinks Greece will need debt relief long into the future.

Greece’s problems were created by years of political irresponsibility – misreporting of statistics and avoidance of economic realities, abetted by membership of the Eurozone which limited options for responding, even if government had been prepared to act. Let’s just summarise it as “political irresponsibility”.

There is a lot of that around at present and maybe its practitioners should be obliged to study Greece for an object lesson in what happens in real, human terms when evidence is neglected by politicians who cannot afford to face up to the conclusions which flow from it.

The increasing babble about “no deal Brexit” and how life could go on perfectly normally clearly fits that pattern. The fundamental

point is that those who propagate that message are utterly uninterested in evidence to the contrary. Ideological hatred of the European Union trumps everything.

In that atmosphere sane people are called on to recant for speaking simple truth. The Foreign Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, had no sooner described a no-deal Brexit as “a mistake we would regret for generations” than he was forced to “clarify” that Britain would “survive and prosper”. Well, that’s reassuring.

I cling to the belief that our political system is not yet so crazed as to allow a “no deal Brexit” and then stand back to observe the consequences – for jobs, for trade, for border controls, for living standards, for the rights of British citizens abroad… the list is endless.

The fact it is even contemplated is a warning sign – that single issue zealots who led us into this mess with shameless

disregard for evidence or truth still need to be faced down. Planning for the amelioration of chaos cannot become normalised as a rational option purely in order to appease the otherwise unappeasable.

In Scotland, we have an equally irrational form of fundamentalist politics. The SNP’S ironically named Growth Commission acknowledged that an independent Scotland would start life with a deficit greater than any EU country – including Greece at its lowest ebb. Small wonder the SNP leadership is not prepared to advertise the report at its annual conference. However, that does not stop them talking endlessly about their own preferred cliff-edge - the prospect of a second independence referendum.

Whatever uncertainties a negotiated Brexit will create, they are as nothing compared to the slough of economic despond a Uk-exit would visit upon Scotland. To

exaggerate the former while blandly denying the latter is absurd – particularly when their own blueprint now acknowledges a starting-point of Greek proportions and beyond.

Vast reliance is placed by the Nationalists on the beneficial role of immigration. Yet no account is taken of the certainty that, in the economic scenario acknowledged by the Growth Commission, there would be lots of out-migration – just like Greece. That reflects a curious imbalance of priorities.

The Greek experience is not a hypothesis but a reality which is available to be studied and learned from. One obvious conclusion is that it is never politicians who led the charge towards a cliff-edge who end up paying the price of their folly.