After They Talked the Talk… Came the Walk the Walk with a Big Limp

         chart: the economist

After They Talked the Talk… Came the Walk the Walk with a Big Limp

Yet Another in a Long Line of Conservative Populist Economic Theories That Was Flat Wrong

You can almost always take populist economic “axioms” straight to the waste bin. Stuff like “don’t tax the job creators,” because a rising tide floats all boats. Rewrite: No one in his or her right mind goes out to hire workers just because they got a tax cut; a rising tide only floats all yachts. Tax cuts don’t make deficits, entitlements create deficits. Rewrite: Tax cuts, which almost never create jobs, truly do create deficits, and only benefit the rich, but the deficit carries interest that everybody pays… while most “entitlements” are earned or deserved. Financial, Medical and Environmental regulations foster an out-of-control bureaucracy, increase our deficit and kill jobs by strangling businesses in red tape and deep state agendas. Rewrite: But for these regulations, DDT would be in all our food, COVID would have killed another million Americans (just look at the mortality rates in red states that lifted basic protections), kids smoking cigarettes would have continued to rise, the Chicago River would still be on fire, cancer rates would have skyrocketed, consumer fraud and false advertising would be a rampant business plan across the land, etc.

But blind populist sentiments – almost always bolstered by “us vs them” conspiracy theories touted by rightwing corporate greed-meisters ready to pounce on the demographic blame cohort du jure (Jews, DEI minorities, immigrants, etc.) – gain traction fast, force political change that almost never works and feeds a growing xenophobia that continues to attempt to explain the resulting failed economic policies. Sooner or later, however, that failure moves from “it’s their fault” to “oh my, what have we done?” Welcome to the economic disaster that has plunged the United Kingdom into becoming Europe’s most underperforming economy: Brexit. As the above survey chart from the April 11th The Economist illustrates, most Brits regret that vote.

Indeed, that issues notes: “It is rare for voters to change their minds soon after referendums. Experience from Canada to Scotland, from Norway to Switzerland, suggests rather that opinions tend to move in favour of a referendum result more than they swing against it. But Brexit seems to be an exception. Since the 52-48% vote in favour of leaving the European Union in June 2016, the majority view among Britons has shifted, and especially so in the past two years, towards the conclusion that the decision was wrong…

“One way to take the temperature is to visit two English towns called Richmond which voted in very different ways in 2016. In Richmond-upon-Thames in London, which voted 69-31% to remain in the EU, opinion has hardened. Gareth Roberts, the Liberal Democrat council leader, notes that post-Brexit niggles such as longer border delays and more intrusive passport controls have helped to solidify local opposition. A Leave voter sitting by the river says he has not changed his mind, but that he is disappointed by the Tories’ failure to strike big trade deals outside the EU.

“The other Richmond, in north Yorkshire, voted 57-43% for Brexit. One Leaver in the market square echoes his southern counterpart by insisting that he still supports Brexit but he complains that it has not been properly done and that immigration has surged despite repeated Tory promises to reduce it. A local bartender says that she voted instinctively to leave but that, were the referendum re-run, she would work harder to understand what it would really mean. Stuart Parsons, a former mayor of Richmond, claims that several friends have changed their minds, especially small farmers who feel betrayed by the Conservatives and now fret about future lost public subsidies.

“Such anecdotes chime with polls across the country. Research by UK in a Changing Europe (UKice), a think-tank, finds that most voters have not in fact changed their minds since 2016. But because as many as 16-20% of those who voted to leave have switched sides, compared with only 6% of those who voted to remain, the balance has swung against Brexit. The passage of time is also having its inevitable effect: older voters were overwhelmingly keen to leave the EU and younger ones were fiercely opposed to the idea. Don’t-knows and those who did not vote in 2016 now tend to break strongly against Brexit.

“Explanations abound for the disillusionment. Sir John Curtice, a leading pollster who works with UKice, points especially to gloom about the economy since 2016, which he says matters more than irritation over immigration. Sarah Olney, the Liberal Democrat MP for Richmond Park, reckons that outright dishonesty on the part of the Leave campaign is to blame. Peter Kellner, a political pundit and former president of YouGov, a polling group, suggests that many Brexit supporters had no idea what would happen if they actually won. That differs sharply from the run-up to most other constitutional referendums.

“Changes in the political background matter as well. The Conservatives under Rishi Sunak, who happens to be the MP for Richmond in Yorkshire and is a keen supporter of Brexit, are associated in voters’ minds with the decision to Leave. Party disunity and the chaos of four prime ministers in five years have helped to discredit something with which the Tories are strongly identified.

“Just as the Tories have helped tarnish views of Brexit, so Brexit is likely to hurt the Tories at the next election. A chunk of people who voted Leave in 2016 say there should still be long-term benefits from quitting the bloc but argue that too little has been done to realise them. This group now leans against the Tories and may even prefer the Reform Party, an insurgent right-wing party. In contrast, those who were against Brexit in 2016 think they were right to fear its economic impact; many who were Tory then now back Labour.”

At the core of such failed populist economic vectors is both a fear of being overwhelmed and governed by “outsiders” and the inane assumption that “we don’t need anyone else to make our economy soar.” Like or not, there are no economies on earth with any measure of economic success that are not profoundly linked to global trade. UK’s Parliament was consumed by copying and passing legislation that London has once relied on (a detail body of trans-European laws, dropping trade and travel barriers and creating regulatory uniformity across the EU).

Well and good, except that Britain lost all those benefits of open trading borders, now forced to deal with its former partners as outside parties that no longer shared common interests with the UK. Simply put, isolation does not work anymore, coordination with trading partners is essential and avoiding inevitable “trade wars, tariffs and barriers,” and there are increasing numbers of issues that can only be resolved on a broader scale. Are you looking MAGA voters? You really think isolationist Trump’s policies will improve your economic life? Welcome to another economic conspiracy policy that, if implemented, will take decades to reverse. Referenda based on facts actually can work… but referenda based on blind assumptions almost never do.

I’m Peter Dekom, and there is a severe penalty to those who buy into conspiracy theories without looking at historical facts… and outsource their opinions to a demagog, who, by his own admission, tends not to read much or follow the opinions of established experts.