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hole in the economy. There remains deep uncertainty about Britain’s future at home and abroad. The British manufacturing industry is already in recession and Britain’s trade deficit is getting worse. This despite a 15 per cent fall in the value of the pound – something that would have been regarded as a sterling crisis in times past. The Bank of England estimates that Britain has already lost two per cent of output thanks to the Brexit effect – that’s around £300bn.
The Brexiters, however, have achieved their goal. Britain is about to leave the European Union with either no deal or some form of basic free-trade deal, of the kind Canada negotiated last year. They know Brexit is going to hurt in the short term. The leading light of the European Research Group, Jacob Rees-Mogg MP, forecast that the “overwhelming opportunity of Brexit is over the next 50 years”. But for them, the pain is worth it because they’ll succeed in the ambition of turning the UK into a low-wage, low-regulation version of Singapore, capable of flooding the EU with cheap goods produced by sweatshop workers.
The truth is, Brexiters are revolutionaries. But their project will come up against an insuperable obstacle: democracy. It is inconceivable that this revolutionary Brexit project – which will drive down living Herald on Sunday Letters
200 Renfield Street Glasgow G2 3QB sunday-letters@ theherald.co.uk Twitter: @heraldscotland Facebook: Search Herald Scotland Web: heraldscotland. com standards and the quality of life of the majority of the population – will be acceptable to British voters. Ironically, the Tory right may have opted to become the grave-diggers of British capitalism.
An entire generation of young people, burdened by student debt, sky-high rents and dismal job prospects, has already lost confidence in the system. They’ve built the Labour Party into the largest mass membership party in Europe, and installed neo-Marxist Jeremy Corbyn as its leader.
They are militantly opposed to Brexit, as we saw in the recent demonstration in London, the largest since the Iraq war, which was largely led by young people. They’ll be joined by the tens of thousands of British workers in firms like BMW, Nissan and Airbus who find that, far from Brexit bringing jobs home, it has sent their firms off to relocate in the European Single Market.
This Budget will have the usual nips and tucks, but nothing can disguise the huge problems ahead. People have simply lost all confidence in arrogant captains of industry like Sir Philip Green, Sir Richard Branson or Sir Fred Goodwin. They may not realise it yet but UK capitalism is in deep trouble, and the Brexiters’ plan to create a kind of Tory Venezuela-onSea is as daft as anything Hugo Chavez ever attempted. Neil Mackay & Margaret Taylor Andrew McKie & Cat Stewart