The Brexit Disaster
Three years ago, Britain's population voted, by the slimmest of margins, to leave the European Union via vague process known as "Brexit". The idea was championed by far right (by which I mean anti-immigrant / anti-feminist right) politicians such as Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson and backed by similar far right activists worldwide, including, of course, Donald Trump and his supporters here in the U.S. Less than three years later, the new Conservative Prime Minister selected to head up this process, Theresa May, has already resigned in disgrace. Her likely replacement, Boris Johnson, who championed the original referendum, advocates for what is known as a "hard Brexit", which means a scenario wherein Britain makes no departing deal at all with the European Union and instead chaotically crashes out of the EU and has to manually negotiate new trade agreements with every country individually. This appears to be what will most likely actually occur, appropriately beginning on Halloween.
It doesn't take a super-genius to figure out that economic disaster will result (indeed the experts project that "under a ‘no deal’ scenario...living costs for low-income households are estimated to increase by £480 per year and that food prices would rise by 8%" while "real wages [would] fall"), but one needn't wait to see an impact from Brexit, as businesses have spent the entire three-year period since the vote leaving Britain in slow-motion in order to shield themselves from the anticipated chaos, resulting in three years of economic stagnation, which themselves follow two recessions in the last decade under the governance of Conservatives. The first of these recessions was, of course, caused by our financial elite here in the U.S. and known as the Great Recession. The second, however, was the product of budgetary austerity measures that the subsequently-elected government of David Cameron introduced in response. In other words, the tea party movement's dreams for America came true in the UK and that was the result.
Anyway, the end consequence of all this has been that, despite an unemployment rate of just 3.8%, the UK nonetheless currently enjoys a poverty rate of 20% (which, for perspective, is worse than our's ever reached even in the depths of the Great Recession here in the U.S.), with wealth distribution and social mobility compared to that of a Victorian workhouse by the UN. These are the economic conditions under which the UK will BEGIN its departure from the European Union! Imagine by the completion of the project!!
Brexiteers have had two motivations in connection to the departure policy: a desire for reduced immigration and a desire for foreign trade policies more favorable to the British (...okay, English) workers. Setting aside the moral issue I take with the former goal to focus on the latter, the stupidity of Brexit is that it will have the exact opposite real-world impact, and we have already seen as much quite clearly in the harsh terms that both the Trump Administration here in the U.S. and also Xi Jinping's government in China have demanded upon the UK vis-a-vis any new, post-Brexit trading deal that may be reached (example). What the tougher stances of the U.S. and China toward the UK in this new atmosphere demonstrate is the reality that leaving the European Union means that the UK will have MUCH LESS bargaining power in the future, NOT more! The UK will emerge from this process much weaker, not stronger. That is why Brexit, and especially a hard Brexit, has been the policy most favored and advanced by Russian intelligence.
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Originally Posted by IMPress Polly
