Why those blaming Brexit for Britain's ills are completely WRONG - MATTHEW GOODWIN

Blaming Britain's economic problems on Brexit lets our leaders off the hook, writes Matthew Goodwin.

Brexit

Blaming Brexit lets our leaders off the hook (Image: Getty)

Speak to anybody in Britain’s ruling class these days and within minutes they’ll tell you the country’s problems are all because of one thing – Brexit.

Everything that’s going wrong in Britain today – from the cost-of-living crisis to our sluggish economy, from problems in the car industry to rain in the sky – are blamed on Brexit and the 17.4 million people who dared vote for it.

Only, I don’t buy it. I really don’t.

For a start, many of the Remoaners who dominate our institutions routinely ignore the fact that almost all these problems are on display in many other democracies.

Slowing growth in the Eurozone? Must be Brexit! Stubbornly persistent inflation across Europe? Brexit!

Rishi Sunak

Rishi Sunak aims to improve Brexit (Image: Getty)

Nearly one in three young people in Spain without jobs? Brexit!

To blame all our problems on the B-word not only ignores how these problems are global but reflects the extent to which our elites are afflicted with Brexit Derangement Syndrome –a curious illness whereby everything is traced back to the events of 2016.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve always found it puzzling how those who are desperate to rejoin the EU routinely ignore what’s actually happening there.

It may be far from the economic and democratic paradise they think it is. But there’s something else, something deeper, going on here too.

Blaming Brexit lets our leaders off the hook – it distracts us from looking at how it is they, not Brexit, who have so far completely failed to tackle Britain’s problems.

It’s not Brexit which created the low-growth, low-wage, London-centric economy which has left much of the rest of the country lagging behind.

RCN strike

Nurses from the RCN strike (Image: Getty)

It was the two main parties who, between the 1980s and the 2010s, completely hollowed out Britain’s economy and reshaped it around London and the elite graduate minority.

It’s not Brexit which created low rates of productivity and a lack of innovation.

It was the two main parties who, like a drug dealer, got our economy and businesses hooked on importing cheap migrant labour, removing any incentive to invest in British workers.

It’s not Brexit which reshaped Britain’s economy, culture, and the institutions around a minority liberal graduate class — the members of which all share the same values and backgrounds, and look down on their fellow citizens.

No, it was the two main parties who, over the last 50 years, doubled down on people with degrees while failing to invest in vocational education for those who, ironically, we now desperately need.

It’s not Brexit which created a low-growth, high-tax economy which leaves businesses stifled by red-tape.

No, it was the two main parties who, rather than slashing taxes and regulation to encourage firms to thrive in Britain, have instead imposed some of the highest corporation tax rates in Europe.

It’s not Brexit which created crisis in the NHS. No, it was the two main parties who, instead of reforming it, pumped it full of money, kept hiring foreign doctors and failed to expand medical training so more of our own kids can enter the profession.

It’s not Brexit which has consistently prioritised global corporations and foreign investors and stoked the housing crisis.

No, it was the two main parties who allowed thousands of homes to be snapped up and relocated to offshore tax havens
by Chinese and Russian investors and who are deepening the housing shortage by welcoming half-a-million migrants a year.

And it’s not Brexit which told the country they would be getting both “high-skilled” and lower amounts of immigration and then gave them something else.

No, it was our national politicians who completely liberalised immigration from outside the European Union and reduced the salary thresholds for working visas to as low as £21,000 – about ten grand below the average wage.

Nigel Farage

Nigel Farage said Brexit failed (Image: Getty)

The key point is that it’s the two main parties, not Brexit, who are responsible for many of the failures we see around us today. These failures have not just flowed from the referendum result – they reflect deliberate political choices made by our national politicians.

And so now they simply have no excuse. The blunt reality is that whether you voted for it or not, Brexit ushered us all into an incredibly exciting and entirely new era in our national history.

An era of democratic accountability in which Britain has once again become a self-governing, sovereign nation.

A place where, unlike the EU, our politicians are fully accountable to the people who elected them.

In other words, the buck stops in Westminster, not the distant and unelected bureaucrats in Brussels and certainly not with the decision we made in 2016.

And I’m not the only one to point this out. Nigel Farage has described Brexit as a failure, not because of the project itself but because our “useless” politicians have “mismanaged” it.

“What Brexit has proved, I’m afraid”, he said last week, “is that our politicians are about as useless as the commissioners in Brussels were.” He has a point.

Millions who took a punt on Brexit thought their politicians would use their new-found freedoms to deliver a low-tax, low-immigration, high-growth economy in which businesses are incentivised to invest in British workers and put them first.

Instead, they have so far delivered a high-tax, high-immigration, low-growth, and depressingly unproductive economy, where business is still hooked on mass immigration and British workers are overlooked.

It’s only when this changes, when British voters elect leaders with courage and insight to make better choices, that the benefits of Brexit will become impossible to ignore – even for those loony Remoaners.

  • Matthew Goodwin is author of the new book Values, Voice and Virtue: The New British Politics, published by Penguin on March 30

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