Those who are aching to plough investment capital into a newly deregulated, laissez-faire UK financial sector will no doubt be gratified by Chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s announcement of a raft of measures intended to recreate the UK as “one of the most open, dynamic and competitive financial services hubs in the world”.
He also hailed “reform of burdensome EU laws that choke off growth in other industries such as digital technology and life sciences”. Yet, the European Union economy grew an average 0.2%-0.3% in the third quarter while the UK economy shrank 0.2%.
The Bank of England is forecasting the country’s longest recession on record, persisting long into 2024.
The desperate hot-button-mashing by the UK government versus cold hard statistics should give clarity on the spirit in which these reforms are being undertaken, and the likely outcome.
Essentially, this is a softer and slightly more sensible version of the same approach that torpedoed Liz Truss’s premiership. The UK Conservative Party is still addicted to laissez-faire economics, and the currently ruling faction within the divided party is still too weak to force its members to confront reality.
The opposition Labour Party has dubbed the reforms “a race to the bottom”.
Writing in the Financial Times, the former chair of the UK’s Independent Commission on Banking warned of the dangers presented by “the special favouring of the financial services sector” in the proposals.
And a writer at the Daily Telegraph, house organ of British Toryism, is proclaiming that “I fear nobody can save Britain from its inevitable, catastrophic collapse”.
It brings to mind John Adams’s verdict on Britain: “The Pride and Vanity of that Nation is a Disease; it is a Delirium. It has been flattered and enflamed so long by themselves, and by others, that it perverts every Thing.” And those of William Pitt, first Earl of Chatham: “We have been deceived and deluded too long. Let us now stop short. This is the crisis – the only crisis of time and situation, to give us a possibility of escape from the fatal effects of our delusions. But if, in an obstinate and infatuated perseverance in folly, we slavishly echo the peremptory words this day presented to us, nothing can save this devoted country from complete and final ruin.”
It seems that the Conservative Party has learned nothing and forgotten nothing since 1776.
