Lockdown Trashed Britain’s Economy – Not Brexit
According to Chancellor Jeremy Hunt, Brexit has been a major cause of the woeful performance of the U.K. economy over the last few years. That’s nonsense, writes Matthew Lynn in the Telegraph. The truth is it was lockdown.
The trouble is, on closer examination Hunt’s argument does not make any sense. To start with, our departure from the EU didn’t lead to a hung Parliament. It was Theresa May’s idiotic decision to call an early General Election, followed by a catastrophically inept campaign, that sacrificed the Conservative majority.
And the years of political instability were only caused by a concerted establishment campaign to reverse the result of the referendum. If everyone had accepted the result in 2016, we could have moved swiftly on, and spent our time far more productively figuring out how to make Brexit work.
More importantly, it doesn’t square with the data from across the continent. German GDP over the last quarter after six months of zero growth, and it is forecast to slump into a full-blown recession early in the new year. French growth is slumping back towards zero too. If Brexit is the explanation for our poor performance, then how come the countries that stayed are doing so poorly?
In reality, it was lockdown that crushed the economy. During the pandemic we racked up too much debt, destroyed our work ethic with furlough schemes and home working, and created a backlog in the health service and in other public services that have crippled productive potential.
In its wake, we imposed huge tax rises to try to put the public finances back on track, including deeply damaging corporation tax increases that dented our competitiveness, and undermined the incentive to work with frozen thresholds that have sent tax yields soaring. By trying to blame Brexit all over again Hunt is simply deflecting his own responsibility for our current predicament, and that of his boss, the Prime Minister and former Chancellor Rishi Sunak.
Worth reading in full.
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https://palexander.substack.com/p/breaking-in-new-zealand-foia-request
Apologies for the slightly off-topic but this is a beauty.
While I agree that Lockdowns trashed our economy Matthew Lynn has not addressed the real issues.
Fishy for one must have known what the outcome of all his ridiculous spending and borrowing was going to be and that is where we are now – a wrecked economy heading for zombie status. Are we really expected to believe that people close to Fishy did not warn him that what he was doing was madness? Fishy himself is decidedly NOT the sharpest knife in the drawer but his background in banking would surely have provided enough knowledge to convince him that his measures were reckless. So the conclusion has to be that Fishy and the rest were implementing measures deliberately intended to produce the wreckage we now see.
Chunt is simply using any excuse to have a go at Brexit and he couldn’t care less if the story he tells is inaccurate or a blatant pack of lies, which it clearly is.
This inversion of anything and everything is simply the way officialdom conducts itself these days. Any lie will do.
Matthew Lynn apportions blame correctly on Fishy and Chunt but he fails to unravel the reasons for our increasing impoverishment.
100% agree – our “leaders” may not be geniuses but genius wasn’t required to understand the economic and social damage done by lockdowns, just as it wasn’t required to realise that injecting billions of people with barely tested product “developed” in “record time” would cause health problems. Every single negative consequence of the “covid reaction” was predicted by people with common sense at the start.
“it wasn’t required to realise that injecting billions of people with barely tested product “developed” in “record time” would cause health problems.”
Correct me if I’m wrong, tof, but you seem to be implying undue haste ie cockup, rather than a conspiracy to cause harm.
I’m looking at it from the point of view of someone who thinks Covid was an emergency and assumes good faith on the part of the pandemicists – I don’t believe either of those things is true, but even from the perspective of someone who did, the harms were obvious
I’m afraid Mr Lynn also uses the “p” word. At least more people are waking up a bit but we’ve still got a long way to go.
Ah yes, he does. As you say tof, still a long way to go.
Even Hitchens who is usually reserved about looking too hard into the CoNvid abyss said it was not a real ‘pandemic’.
Gaslighting comes to mind.
Of course these shysters would blame what passes for Brexit rather than the lockdowns. This serves 2 purposes at once – pointing out what a terrible idea Brexit was (rather than the crooked machinations of the Brussels mob doing everything they could to make it fail) and getting the government crooks off the hook for their egregious lockdowns.
the crooked machinations of the Brussels mob doing everything they could to make it fail Like what, for instance? And to achieve which political ends? It bears repeating here that the hypothetical Brüssel Mob is still a creation of US propaganda done by people who either don’t understand the difference between a federal state (with a sovereign government) and a confederation of states (with no such government but with certain central offices which are not sovereign but may only act as directed by the member states) or bank on their audience either not understanding or not caring to understand the difference after having been whipped up suitably. Insofar Evil Stuff™ happens at EU level (a notion I’d certainly agree with) that’s because the governments of the member states have collectively chosen to make it happen and not because Flinten-Uschi¹ has any special powers (which she doesn’t). ¹ German nickname for Ursula von der Leyen dating back to her (disastrous) stunt as German secretary of defense. Flinte is colloquial and derogatory German for musket and Uschi an abbreviation for Ursula family members and close friends might use informally. This also alludes to the German noun Flintenweib, literally musket spouse, which is… Read more »
I certainly do not recognise the EU as you describe it. What I see is a mafia gang conducting itself like true gangsters – lying, cheating, thieving and screw the plebs.
The EU is a vehicle which moves as driven.
And it is moving in the Globalist direction, something Tony Ben warned about. EEC was just a trading block to start but had expansion plans. Think there is an old video of Peter Hitchens going through the archives from the early days noting various plans for expansion, as has happened.
The other massive cause of our economic problems is net zero. Causing energy prices to be artificially high, which has wrecked our heavy industry and fuelled (if you’ll excuse the expression) inflation.
My view, which may be controversial on this site, is that Boris will go down in history as the most economically damaging PM of all time, being responsible for 3 hugely damaging policy interventions – net zero, covid policy and Brexit.
He wasn’t responsible for either Net Zero or Brexit, and Brexit has had an economically trivial economic effect compared to Net Zero, Covid or 26 years of by far the highest immigration in our history.
History is written by the victors. We are some way from winning this war.
If they get their way, do you think they would allow old films that would remind people how free we once were!
The Rona Fascism was a disaster – blame Brexit.
Lockdowns murdered people, wiped out our economy and SMB – blame Brexit.
150K died post the stabbinations – blame Brexit.
Net wealth has declined since the 2008 bank meltdown – blame Brexit.
We outsourced all manufacturing and are a services, finance economy – blame Brexit.
The Bird choppers are largely useless at supplying elastic energy needs – blame Brexit.
Muslims raped more white girls this year – blame Brexit.
It is cold tonight – blame Brexit
NATO got its ass handed to it by Russia in the Ukedemocracy – blame Brexit.
etc.
1 year ago I wrote:
“If we were to put £20 notes in a suitcase then 1 suitcase would contain about £100,000. So 10 suitcases would be £1,000,000.
Now imagine a (very big) field that contained 500,000 (half a million) of these suitcases.
Now imagine getting all those suitcases and putting them in a big pile, pouring petrol on them and setting them alight.
That’s in effect, what we have done with the taxpayers money spent on Covid in the UK ALONE, a virus that, at worst, is cured by a Lemsip Max.
That is why we, and the rest of the world, now have eye watering inflation.
It’s not rocket science.”
It did trash the economy and in ways which aren’t to be gleaned from the numbers alone. In terms of human resources and the damage to the minds of young people then the price is incalculable. In February 2020 the system was about go down big time. In a sense you could say that the fabricated pandemic brought about a reprieve. That is what they were doing the financial elite. At that point in time there was simply no way avoid it all going down. What happened afterwards was the intrusion of an agenda more evil than most people can conceive of. It was waiting to be born. Part of it was even predicted and prescribed by Fauci and his colleagues a few years earlier when they talked about creating an opportunity for the old technolgies to be put aside in favour of the mRNA revolution. Just look at investment in recent years including in this country. The attack upon fertility and the killings were talked about decades ago. In a sense your willingness to take the jab was in inverse proprtion to your fitness to survive. All written about as a matter of doctrine. Even Albert Bourla the head… Read more »
I thought he did take it, but could’ve been faked.
They’re talking about cyber attacks as well as attacks upon currencies. You might want to think about any money you hold electronically. Bear in mind that the growth of these technolgies can be very fast. Don’t carry around with you the assumption that online banking is safe.
They won’t need to call it a lockdown this time. You will just have nowhere to go and nothing to do and nothing to feed your family with. Like a boa constrictor. As as the bankers say, inflate or die. We are late in this game you really need to undestand the predatory nature of our adversary. The reality is we come to an arrangement soon or we have big problems.
I know the energy is out there. Albeit rather hidden on this page but I can understand that. I mean seriously we have a very short window left to us as the English people. Our time is asking us to stand for something.
My own conspiracy theory about Mrs May calling an election and losing her majority with what seems a deliberate own goal regarding Pensions (older voters make majority) was that it was a deliberate ploy to undermine Brexit. No majority, she has to rely on Lib/Labs to get through ‘deals’…and those deals would be watered down by a Remainer (like herself) establishment.