Brexit and other offensive words starting with the letter B

June 25, 2022, 11:00 pm

≫ Next: Starmer’s tough line on Brexit made Johnson expendable to Leavers | William Keegan

The philosopher Harry G Frankfurt’s book on dishonesty offers a valuable insight into the Johnsonian mindset

I would love to have been a fly on the wall when the subject of the EU came up during the meetings between Boris Johnson and Ukraine’s President Zelenskiy. How could Johnson, master of bullshit, have possibly handled the irony of the situation? He, the principal culprit in what is being increasingly recognised as the self-harm of Brexit; and Zelenskiy, desperate to join the EU that the UK, in its unforgivable folly, has left.

Now, I use the word bullshit – not normally one that appears in this column – advisedly. I have read a short book by a renowned American moral philosopher, Harry G Frankfurt, entitled On Bullshit. Frankfurt examines the distinction between humbug – “deceptive misrepresentation, short of lying” – and outright lying; he sees his third category, bullshit, as “a lack of connection to a concern with truth”. It is “this indifference to how things really are” that he regards as “the essence of bullshit”.

↧

Starmer’s tough line on Brexit made Johnson expendable to Leavers | William Keegan

July 9, 2022, 11:00 pm

≫ Next: Tax-cut stunts can’t cover up the disaster that is Brexit | William Keegan

≪ Previous: Brexit and other offensive words starting with the letter B

Hardcore Tories knew it was safe to oust their leader after Labour ruled out rejoining the EU. Now who might follow him?

For some reason, the last days of Boris Johnson’s leadership of the Conservative party reminded me of the last days of Nero. That self-serving, delusional speech outside No 10 evoked echoes of Suetonius’s version of the dying words attributed to Nero: “Qualis artifex pereo” – What an artist dies in me.

So much done! Brexit Unchained! So much more to be achieved … (Sorry. Sarcasm is dangerous.)

↧

Tax-cut stunts can’t cover up the disaster that is Brexit | William Keegan

July 23, 2022, 11:00 pm

≫ Next: Brexit will make a bad recession even worse | William Keegan

≪ Previous: Starmer’s tough line on Brexit made Johnson expendable to Leavers | William Keegan

Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak feel bound to talk lower spending to party members, but the former chancellor at least must see the folly of losing billions off our GDP

‘They are trying to hide the failure of Brexit behind policy stunts.” This observation about the fiasco of the Conservative party’s leadership contest came from an economist friend and neatly sums it up.

Liz Truss, who voted Remain but is now an ardent Brexiter, cannot admit to herself that she was right first time, and that the trade deals she goes on about that are supposed to have made up for our crass departure from the European Union do not amount to a hill of beans.

↧

Brexit will make a bad recession even worse | William Keegan

August 6, 2022, 11:00 pm

≫ Next: This is not the 1970s. Tory pledges to cut taxes are absurd

≪ Previous: Tax-cut stunts can’t cover up the disaster that is Brexit | William Keegan

The Tory leadership contenders are pursuing a dangerous nirvana of low taxation while ignoring the damage inflicted by leaving the EU

Britain is rapidly entering its worst economic crisis since the 1970s, but it is a crisis hardly discussed by the two rightwing Conservative politicians vying for the premiership.

The National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) and the Bank of England have both pronounced that we are entering a recession that could last for much of next year. This will serve to aggravate already serious economic, industrial and social problems, with goodness knows how much public unrest.

↧

This is not the 1970s. Tory pledges to cut taxes are absurd

August 20, 2022, 11:00 pm

≫ Next: Britain needs an economic strategy – instead we’ve got Liz Truss | William Keegan

≪ Previous: Brexit will make a bad recession even worse | William Keegan

Sunak and Truss have no grasp of how low personal taxation is now – or how much a battered Britain needs public spending

Whenever I told him things were going from bad to worse, my father used to nod sagely and say: “It was ever thus.” However, I wonder what he would have said now about the state of the country and the “governing” Conservative party.

In a leadership race whose inanity almost beggars belief, the two very rightwing contenders seem obsessed with establishing their Thatcherite credentials without, as far as I can see, having a clue what Thatcherism was really about.

↧

Britain needs an economic strategy – instead we’ve got Liz Truss | William Keegan

September 3, 2022, 11:00 pm

≫ Next: Kwarteng follows dirty work at Treasury with bonus cap farce

≪ Previous: This is not the 1970s. Tory pledges to cut taxes are absurd

As we wrestle with the disaster of Brexit and loss of the single market, our next PM is ruining Anglo-French relations

During a blissful holiday in the Vaucluse I managed to avoid any news about this dangerously absurd Conservative leadership election – that is, apart from one classic Truss gaffe.

Yes, the news that Liz Truss had declared that “the jury is out” on the UK’s future relations with France most certainly struck a dissonant chord with Kate McKinley, who runs the Mourchon winery in Séguret. She informed me of it with a despairing air, adding also that President Emmanuel Macron had reacted with the tolerance that has become his lot in matters of Anglo-French relations as long as the Brexiters reign over here.

↧

Kwarteng follows dirty work at Treasury with bonus cap farce

September 17, 2022, 11:00 pm

≫ Next: Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng’s foolish dash for growth is a non-starter

≪ Previous: Britain needs an economic strategy – instead we’ve got Liz Truss | William Keegan

After sacking the his top official, the new chancellor’s next act was politically crass and insensitive. It does not bode well

One of the themes of the coverage of our late Queen’s life has been what a good sense of humour she had. But I did not see any references to the day it fell to her to make her speech at the opening of parliament on 21 June 2017.

On that day her monarchical duty, in the Queen’s speech, was to outline the proposed legislation that would prepare the UK for its departure from the European Union.

↧

Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng’s foolish dash for growth is a non-starter

October 1, 2022, 11:00 pm

≫ Next: Here’s my plan for growth, Liz Truss: rejoin the EU and let its citizens work here

≪ Previous: Kwarteng follows dirty work at Treasury with bonus cap farce

The arrogance of the prime minister and chancellor looks to have been their undoing

The ghosts of British economic crises past are raising their spectral heads. Memories are being evoked of the ill-conceived and ill-fated “dashes for growth” under Conservative chancellor Reginald Maudling in 1962-64, Anthony Barber in 1972-74 and my old friend Nigel Lawson in 1988-89.

Yes, they too were Tory chancellors. They usually are. When Gordon Brown, Labour chancellor from 1997 to 2007, was reported as promising “no more boom and bust” he was teased and widely misquoted. What he insisted he actually said was “no more Tory boom and bust”.

↧

Here’s my plan for growth, Liz Truss: rejoin the EU and let its citizens work here

October 15, 2022, 11:00 pm

≫ Next: Taking back control? It’s the markets that are sovereign over Brexit Britain

≪ Previous: Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng’s foolish dash for growth is a non-starter

It was no good for the PM and Kwasi Kwarteng to dismiss U-turns on their growth plan as ‘distractions’, the damage is done

First the dynamic duo, Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng, were going to “hit the ground running”; then they claimed they hadn’t prepared the ground they were going to hit. What their marriage of culpable ignorance and arrogance in fact achieved was something greeted with astonishment not only by them, but worldwide: they hit the pound running.

The Conservative party took a long time to recover from Black Wednesday, 16 September 1992, when the pound was ejected humiliatingly from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism – the ERM – membership of which had become the fulcrum of their economic policy.

↧

Taking back control? It’s the markets that are sovereign over Brexit Britain

October 30, 2022, 12:00 am

≫ Next: Amid fiscal shock and awe, more austerity is the last thing we need

≪ Previous: Here’s my plan for growth, Liz Truss: rejoin the EU and let its citizens work here

Economic crises of the past offered a clear warning about the foolhardiness of the Truss-Kwarteng debacle

If I had been a member of the Conservative and Brexit party eligible to vote in its leadership election – which thank the Lord I was not, sir – I should have marked my ballot paper “none of the above”.

In a variation on Mark Antony’s observation that the evil that men do lives after them, Boris Johnson and his Brexit have wreaked so much damage on the Conservative party that only Brexiters stood a chance of being elected.

↧

Amid fiscal shock and awe, more austerity is the last thing we need

November 12, 2022, 11:00 pm

≫ Next: Brexit has made Britain the sick man of Europe again | William Keegan

≪ Previous: Taking back control? It’s the markets that are sovereign over Brexit Britain

A collapse in credibility under the former Tory PM is being followed by a return to ‘sado-monetarism’ under the new one

One of the unfortunate consequences of the 44-day Truss/Kwarteng economic experiment is that there is now almost certainly going to be an overreaction. It was fit and just that the free-marketeers were brought down by the markets they believed in. The irony of it! But the danger now, with all this talk about the black hole in the nation’s finances, is that in its efforts to restore “credibility” the Sunak/Hunt economic experiment could well be taking risks with the country’s social fabric, while not necessarily retaining credibility in the markets.

To put it bluntly: when the central banks of the Group of Seven are on the warpath, deliberately fomenting recessionary forces to fight inflation, there is a danger of a recurrence of what, in the early 1980s, I termed “sado-monetarism” – as if the sado-Brexiters were not enough.

↧

Brexit has made Britain the sick man of Europe again | William Keegan

November 26, 2022, 11:00 pm

≫ Next: Infamy, infamy … the Brexit legions have still got it in for Sunak

≪ Previous: Amid fiscal shock and awe, more austerity is the last thing we need

The EU did wonders for the economy: that was why we joined. Our departure from it is now all too obviously costing us that prosperity

When recently asked on the Today programme to cite chapter and verse on the subject of Brexit “opportunities” Michael Gove, the secretary of state for all seasons, was hopelessly out of his depth.

However, Gove missed a trick. What he should have said, but as a signed-up Brexiter obviously could not, was that the only “opportunity” arising from Brexit was to conduct a scientific experiment to demonstrate that the whole idea was a mistake. Moreover, it was a confidence trick on the British public, the majority of whom now realise that they have been had.

↧

Infamy, infamy … the Brexit legions have still got it in for Sunak

December 10, 2022, 11:00 pm

≫ Next: Brexit is just one of the three Tory errors that have brought Britain to its knees

≪ Previous: Brexit has made Britain the sick man of Europe again | William Keegan

Power, in this disintegrating Tory party, seems as precarious as being an emperor in febrile ancient Rome

Classical scholars must surely see parallels between the embarrassing sequence of prime ministerial changes in the British government this year and events in AD68-69 in the ancient Rome so beloved of Boris Johnson.

AD68-69 was the year of the four emperors. First there was Galba, murdered by soldiers of his Praetorian Guard – this year’s parallel being the removal of Johnson by his long-suffering cabinet. Then there was Otho, who took his own life – this year’s version being the political suicide committed by Liz Truss with her lunatic budget.

↧

Brexit is just one of the three Tory errors that have brought Britain to its knees

January 7, 2023, 11:00 pm

≫ Next: Wilson won after 13 wasted Tory years. Starmer can do exactly the same

≪ Previous: Infamy, infamy … the Brexit legions have still got it in for Sunak

Years of austerity, and then the Truss-Kwarteng fiasco, have compounded the self-inflicted isolation of leaving the EU

I did not get where I am today making forecasts about how the economy will perform in a new year. But I do feel it is my duty to emphasise the tangle into which this benighted government has got itself and us, and the connection between the three macroeconomic policy errors that have made us what we are – namely the “sick man of Europe”, with an economic performance worse than any other member of the G20 economies apart from Russia.

What prompted me to do this was a BBC Today programme last week, guest-edited by Dame Sharon White, chairman – her own preferred term – of the John Lewis Partnership. White took the opportunity to invite other economists to discuss the present UK economic malaise. What struck me was the way they agreed that, after the fiasco of the brief Truss-Kwarteng “fiscal event”, the prime macroeconomic objective of the UK – which in this case means the government and the Bank of England – was to restore “credibility”.

↧

Wilson won after 13 wasted Tory years. Starmer can do exactly the same

January 21, 2023, 11:00 pm

≫ Next: It is hard to admit being wrong. But Brexit voters are doing so in droves

≪ Previous: Brexit is just one of the three Tory errors that have brought Britain to its knees

The Labour front bench was highly visible in Davos, while Sunak didn’t even attend. One senses that the guard is changing

The Labour party under Keir Starmer is clearly a government in waiting. The Labour leader and his shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves, were generally considered to be representing the UK last week at the resumed, post-epidemic annual meeting in Davos of the World Economic Forum. Our prime minister, the hapless Rishi Sunak, may be desperate for overseas investors to back Brexit Britain, but did not even bother to beat the drum by going to Davos himself.

Sunak must know that the game is already up. He seeks consensus, but is tortured by the detritus of what has become the Conservative and Brexit party, who are out to get him. Now, in a sane world, there would be a general election this year; the Augean stables would be cleared and this reprehensible, indeed disgusting, government would be thrown out. But unless one of Harold Macmillan’s “events” precipitates an unexpected election, we are fated to wait another year.

↧

It is hard to admit being wrong. But Brexit voters are doing so in droves

February 4, 2023, 11:00 pm

≫ Next: Nurses’ pay squeeze and Tory tax cut ambitions: can they perhaps be related?

≪ Previous: Wilson won after 13 wasted Tory years. Starmer can do exactly the same

Having been grossly misled in the referendum, Britons’ anger is mounting as the reality of our plight becomes clear

Commentators, politicians and economists tend to think they are quoting John Maynard Keynes with: “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?”

I have always been suspicious of the derivation of this putative remark. Even in this modern world of fake news, facts do not change. New information may come to light, but facts are facts. I don’t think there is any evidence that Keynes ever perpetrated such a canard, and nor does Keynes’s distinguished biographer, Robert Skidelsky.

↧

Nurses’ pay squeeze and Tory tax cut ambitions: can they perhaps be related?

February 18, 2023, 11:00 pm

≫ Next: Sunak likes the single market. Why doesn’t Labour? | William Keegan

≪ Previous: It is hard to admit being wrong. But Brexit voters are doing so in droves

The Conservatives’ long assault on the public sector has been multifaceted. But the meanness over public sector pay is its ugliest aspect

Before we get on to Brexit – don’t worry: we shall – I want to draw attention to what I regard as the epitome of the meanness and duplicity of what is indubitably the worst government of most of our lifetimes.

Sorry, did I say “government”? A neighbour asked me the other day if I was aware of a new oxymoron. Tell me, I replied. “The very phrase ‘Conservative government’,” he said.

↧

Sunak likes the single market. Why doesn’t Labour? | William Keegan

March 4, 2023, 11:00 pm

≫ Next: If chancellor wants growth, why not rejoin the EU? | William Keegan

≪ Previous: Nurses’ pay squeeze and Tory tax cut ambitions: can they perhaps be related?

The PM’s commendation of the EU’s benefits to Northern Ireland is surely a sign for the party to embrace rejoining

There is a marvellous moment in one of the great Fast Show sketches when, within seconds, the George Smiley-esque interrogator raises his hand in triumph because the prisoner has given himself away – blown it, as they say. Such a moment came last week, when, in his commendable efforts to settle the Northern Irish question, Rishi Sunak told the province how lucky it was to be in the European single market as well as the UK.

I should not wish to push the comparison too far, but it is certainly the case that before the euphoria accompanying the Windsor framework, the prime minister appeared to be a prisoner of the rightwing European Research Group (ERG), who are in cahoots with the Democratic Unionist party (DUP).

↧

If chancellor wants growth, why not rejoin the EU? | William Keegan

March 19, 2023, 12:00 am

≫ Next: Sunak may repent of Brexit before Starmer does | William Keegan

≪ Previous: Sunak likes the single market. Why doesn’t Labour? | William Keegan

Jeremy Hunt says the economy is his priority; but it and he are still really in thrall to the ideological blight of Brexit

A budget for growth? Sorry, pull the other one. Below the spin, even the official forecasts are laden with gloom. Funnily enough, it is 50 years since one of Jeremy Hunt’s chancellarial predecessors, Tony Barber, produced a “budget for growth” that really worked – indeed, rather too well. It resulted in the “Barber boom”, when gross domestic product rose by some 6% in real, adjusted-for-inflation, terms in one year.

They don’t come like that any more, which is just as well, because the Barber boom ended in tears. (In truth it was the Heath boom, because the prime minister was really in charge.)

↧

Sunak may repent of Brexit before Starmer does | William Keegan

April 1, 2023, 11:00 pm

≪ Previous: If chancellor wants growth, why not rejoin the EU? | William Keegan

The blight on living standards makes the case for rejoining stronger every day – and this PM is nothing if not pragmatic

For many years, when asked to speak about the British economy, I used to point out that the influence of technological progress on productivity allowed an average growth rate of 2.25% to 2.5% a year. This meant that living standards could double every 25 years or so. Political battles raged over the sharing of the growth, but on the whole most people gained to some extent.

No longer! Beneath all the fanciful predictions emanating from this tired government come the hard facts from the independent Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), the Resolution Foundation and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. A collapse of investment, with more and more international corporations deciding Britain is no longer the place to invest for a foothold in the European market. And dire forecasts of a 6% fall in living standards in the next two years. Some platform for an election, eh?

↧

Latest Images