It looks backward to the reasons why a majority voted to leave the EU and I make no apologies for raising it here because I think if we are to reverse Brexit and avoid a repeat we need to know why we failed the first time round.
The report published by Another Europe is partly about inequality, the thing which Dorling claims was largely responsible. Some of the data presented is demoralising rather than new.
I knew for example that Britain is one of the most unequal countries in Europe. Income per capita looks reasonable until you realise it’s skewed by an inordinate number of extremely wealthy people, often bankers, the ones that Sunak is making even wealthier by lifting the EU-imposed bonus cap.
" Having a higher level of income inequality than any of the EU27, with the possible exception of Bulgaria, means that more people in the UK have an income very much lower than that implied by UK GDP per capita. Nevertheless, despite the statistic flattering the UK, the UK still ranks lowly and is falling down the ranks. This would be less serious if income inequality were to fall in the UK. The European countries that have almost identical GDP per capita to the UK are Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Italy, Malta, and Slovenia. If you want to travel to a place that is most economically similar to the UK in Europe, these are the places to travel to. However, Slovenia, being far more equitable than the UK, is home to far fewer people living in poverty."
Next public spending. This graph and the text below it show the UK continuously at the bottom when it comes to public spending and investment since 1984-85. And it's only as high as it is now because of the eye-watering amounts spent on debt interest:
Next, banking. "By April 2021 it had been estimated that some 440 financial services firms in the UK had responded to Brexit by relocating part or all of their business, staff, or legal entities to the EU. This was estimated to involve ‘more than £900bn in bank assets (roughly 10% of the entire UK banking system).’ When the UK had been a member state, two fifths of all its financial services exports were to the EU."
Last year it was reported approvingly in The Daily Mail that major UK banks generated more profit last year than their French counterparts for the first time since 2015. The data, compiled by The Banker magazine, showed that the UK’s major lenders (HSBC, Barclays, Lloyds Banking Group, Standard Chartered, NatWest, and Nationwide) reported profits totaling £45.4billion.
France was only a whisker behind but German banks produced just £11.4billion. That figure really caught my eye. Germany is far better off than we are but their banks generated a quarter of the profits that ours did. And the EU still has the cap on bonuses in place.
All that money is not going to trickle down as Dorling points out.
Also, we now have the largest online gambling market in the world and the world’s largest gambling industry"
" … the UK [gambling industry] generates more revenues than France, Germany and Italy combined — and the devastating consequences it’s had for punters and their families. Our analysis of public records shows that gambling firms have spent hundreds of thousands of pounds on British politicians and that spending has ramped up significantly since 2019 when the government announced a review of the law. A proposed set of reforms is due anytime but has been delayed at least four times and subject to heavy industry lobbying – key proposals were either changed or dropped in the final days of Boris Johnson’s premiership."
I have always argued against Brexit because of trade. This is central to the UK economy because we have little natural wealth and we need to live by our trade but two of our biggest industries - banking and gambling - do nothing to reduce inequality. As the report points out, any profits "end up allowing more money to flow into the pockets of rich shareholders, rather than contribute towards genuine investment."
And money or rather the lack of it is the issue at the heart of nearly every problem in an advanced economy like ours.
The report says, "So, there you have it – rising from the ashes of being a member of the EU, the UK is now (supposedly) a force to be reckoned with. And this is what you would think if you confined yourself to reading certain newspapers and watching certain TV channels. But eventually a little balance seeps in, especially with reports from abroad about the current state of the UK."
Dorling then quotes (pages 27-28) from an article in the German newspaper Der Spiegel (The Mirror) from April this year which paints a bleaker picture of the UK rather than the upbeat stuff you get in The Express.
And he points out that we are now seeing Conservative commentators writing about the 'terrible state of Britain' - often in the pages of the Mail and Telegraph - apparently without any reference to Brexit and calling for more tax and spending cuts.
Crazy or what?
That's the problem. We didn't think. And this one:Have you got nothing better to do with life
— Karl Beeby (@karlbeeby) October 25, 2023
Brexit was a decision, we thought, we decided, we took it
Brexit can’t fail, we left the EU, we hold primacy over UK state law. Not a difficult concept but one clearly beyond you.
— John W (@ElginWhites) October 25, 2023
