The immediate cause of the United Kingdom’s self-inflicted economic crisis, that led to prime minister Liz Truss sacking her chancellor of the exchequer, Kwasi Kwarteng, was a series of elementary misjudgments. Those mistakes reflected the prioritisation of swaggering self-confidence over expert advice, the favouring of maverick instincts over objective facts.
However, the roots of the current mayhem lie deep in the soil of Brexit. The original sin was Brexit itself. The mentality that led to Britain’s departure from the European Union continues to significantly shape British government policy.
There are at least four direct links between the Brexit fable and the budgetary bedlam of recent days.
The economies of many EU countries are in a healthier state than that of the UK. But the fiction about the dead hand of Brussels bureaucracy is another necessary tenet of the Brexit cult
First is the explicit dismissal of expertise. During the 2016 referendum, the arguments about the benefits to the UK of EU membership were objectively so strong that they could only be combatted by denouncing the experts making those arguments. Michael Gove’s repudiation of experts was not a slip of the tongue but a fundamental doctrine of the Brexit faith. Similarly, the Truss government made clear from the outset that experts were to be sidelined. On his first day in office, her short-lived chancellor sacked the highly admired permanent secretary of his department, a move that conveyed a wider message about the value he attached to objective advice.
Brexit survey: most voters in Northern Ireland back retaining trade deal but hardline unionists strongly opposed
Bill Nighy: ‘My grandmother kind of raised me. She was a proper Irish woman, a Catholic. I was to be a priest’
Stormont vote on continuing Brexit deal the ‘most significant’ in Assembly’s history - Allister
Can the hard man of Brexit fix corporate groupthink?
Then he explicitly blocked the office of budgetary responsibility, the very name of which may offend his devil-may-care instincts, from offering an opinion on his controversial mini budget. It is hard to overstate the importance, for any government, of public servants who give objective advice and ministers who are prepared to listen to them. The prime minister’s dramatic U-turns reflect the belated intrusion of some reality into policy deliberations in London, but pesky reality continues to grapple with preconceived ideology.
[ Liz Truss sacks chancellor and makes another budget U-turnOpens in new window ]
A second common thread linking the Brexit rhetoric of six years ago to the recent debacle is the notion that it was EU regulation that was holding the UK economy back. This was, of course, always nonsense. The economies of many EU countries are in a healthier state than that of the UK. But the fiction about the dead hand of Brussels bureaucracy is another necessary tenet of the Brexit cult. Since the UK has not yet derived any benefit from Brexit, it must still aspire to unchain itself from fictional European manacles. Hence Kwarteng’s removal of the cap on banker’s bonuses. Hence his buccaneering ambition to build his Singapore on the Thames, a paradise for the wealthy that goes well beyond the Brexit the British people were asked to vote for. Nor does it bear any relation to the Conservative election manifesto put before the British people in 2019.
A third aspect of the original Brexit ideology that has gained a firm foothold in the Truss economic philosophy is an exaggerated sense of the UK’s importance. The UK is, of course, still an important country. However, it is not important enough to go it alone in the world. Nobody in Tokyo or Ottawa considers the UK as more “global” than, say, Germany or France, or indeed than the UK itself when it was still a member state of the EU. Kwarteng’s misfiring budgetary bazooka smacked of a similar delusion that the UK was big enough to dismiss the economic orthodoxy of its largest international partners, the concerns of the IMF and the predictable reaction of the markets.
The simple fact remains that Brexit can bring no benefits to anyone. The EU has understood this from the outset
Fourth, the dismissal of expertise makes it possible to believe the unbelievable. For Johnson, one great fantasy was that the UK could have its cake and eat it, that it could leave the EU while retaining its benefits. A similar great fantasy of the Truss government seems to be that it is plausible to have a “minister for levelling up” while pursuing an economic philosophy designed to foster greater divergence in society. The disconnect from reality was further underlined by implausible ministerial assertions that the UK’s recent economic turbulence was part of a global phenomenon, largely unrelated to the now notorious mini-budget.
The simple fact remains that Brexit can bring no benefits to anyone. The EU has understood this from the outset. However, despite all the evidence to the contrary and despite a radical shift of the public mood in the UK in favour one day of rejoining the EU, the high priests of Brexit have no choice but to continue to believe and assert that Brexit will one day be a success. Otherwise, they would have to acknowledge the irreparable damage they have done to their country. Their desperate but necessary fantasy is that Brexit’s sunlit uplands lie just around some corner, if only they could find the right corner. The forlorn search for that much promised land seems to have been a significant factor behind the recent, now crumbling, budgetary gamble.
Bobby McDonagh is a former ambassador to London, Brussels and Rome