Independent countries that are doing well.
When you look at independent countries who are doing well even though they are not members of big trading blocs you find in every case that there is a good reason. South Korea has a highly educated workforce and a huge market on their doorstep. We do not have a highly educated workforce and if hard Brexit goes ahead we will be cutting ourselves off from a huge market on our doorstep. Mrs May’s soft Brexit will get neither past the EU nor the House of Commons. Norway has oil that the EU wants. Our North Sea oil is running out. Switzerland has their big chemical firms, Nestlé and banks that rich eurocrats want because they want to deposit money outside their own countries’ jurisdiction. We have Glaxo Smith Klein true but no Nestlé and our banks won’t rival Switzerland’s. We could, it is true, make ourselves into the low tax offshore capital of the world, but do we really want that with the rest of us paying the taxes that the Russian billionaires are not? These countries are doing well because they have something to sell that other people want. What do we have? Mrs Thatcher destroyed our heavy industries. After Brexit London will cease to be the finance capital of the world. Light industry? Are big economies really going to want doorknobs and laminated windscreens? Beefeaters and Scotch Whiskey I suppose, at least while Scotland remains part of the UK. We are always going to be uncompetitive because we have few raw materials of our own and we have to import them before we can even start manufacturing and relatively high labour costs. Speculators won’t like Brexit which means the pound will continue weak. That’s good for exports in the short term but when your supplies of raw materials run out and you have to import them at higher cost then for a country like the UK it is disastrous. These are some of the reasons why pretty much every competent economic authority in the world is warning that Brexit will be a catastrophe for Britain. Pooh! experts! But could it be that they know what they are talking about, at least more than the bloke down the pub or Boris Johnson? Brexit is madness. But you can’t explain to the mad that they are mad for the very reason that they are mad. Don’t do it.
