Why I'm agnostic about Boris Johnson leaving.

He obviously deserved to go and I have multiple disagreements with his politics but whatever replaces him is going to be at least as bad for the British people.

The British people have realised that Johnson is corrupt, dishonest and self-centred. No shit. This was all public knowledge long before he became prime minister. It seems really weird to me that only now these character traits are something that rule him out of government. It's his lies about Christmas parties (breaking his own lockdown rules) and the lie about knowing a minister was accused of sexual assault that cost him. But why get angry about this? Why feel betrayed? I would be personally shocked if he didn't lie about these things. Of course, he thinks that the rules don't apply to him, he's Boris Johnson.

Much more consequential for the lives and livelihoods of British people are the lies about Covid and Brexit. Our government handled the pandemic much worse than most, only to be bailed out when a British company discovered the first good vaccine. There is not a single economist who denies that Brexit has not contributed massively to the cost of living crisis but plenty of politicians do, Johnson chief amongst them. Also factor in other borderline bullshit about 'levelling-up' and supporting the NHS etc. Any one of these things should be a bigger scandal than partygate.

The likelihood is, however, that whoever comes next will be worse (at least in some ways). Rishi Sunak is a fiscal austerian and deficit hawk. In plain English: This means that he will cut benefits and services, whilst keeping taxes high on ordinary people. Johnson - I guess to his credit - disagreed with Sunak over this. Almost all the other candidates are likewise to the right of Johnson on economic policy and will have economic recovery plans that place the burden on the poor and away from their affluent home-owner voting base as much as they possibly can.

This is the Conservative Party. Its the political vessel for the British establishment and it always will be. It's still the party that Thatcher made in her own image and their leading figures care much more about Ayn Rand than the working class red-wall voters who wanted to get Brexit done. The rich will be protected and the most unequal of Europe's major nations will become even more so.

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PDXNative1986 · 36-40, MVIP

it would be like if here in the united states we elected ted nugent president thats all I thought when Boris johnson became Prime minister. Also the entire field of economics is pretty uniform against the idea that protectionism works for the benefit of any country.

and that goes from the left to the right of the profession. it's pretty unanimous that free trade is the only way.

So of course brexit would backfire.

KarenDuponteDurose · 51-55, F

@PDXNative1986 The free trade thing is what we've got. Fine if you've got a lot of things that the world needs. The thing about the European Union is that it gave uniform barriers for each of the countries within it to trade, instead of the negotiations with every country in the world, which means that you can be exploited by some on the exports. Uniform trade on 27 other nearby, important countries (as the EU is for the UK with around 47% of our trade) means less to worry about.

Oh, if things were so easy....

Well, they could have been, y'know?

🤔

PDXNative1986 · 36-40, MVIP

@KarenDuponteDurose the point economist are trying to make is that it doesn't make sense to view the economy as an individual and that while some individuals benefit from protectionist policies the nation suffers because a few things happen with tariffs and that sort of thing which is essentially that those countries enact their own in retaliation and in the end for a few privileged workers in your country who benefit the whole rest of the nation suffers, we did this during the trump era in the united states and all it resulted in was higher aluminum prices among other things which just translated into less money to spend elsewhere and honestly we need a new economics because the real "job creators" are not billionaires but every day consumers. All it does is screw consumers over. and when you fuck with them we can't do what we do best which is keep people employed.

KarenDuponteDurose · 51-55, F

@PDXNative1986 Oh, I agree with that, totally. Countries need to 'play nice' with other countries and then everyone will benefit. Unfortunately, human beings (and most certainly politicians!) aren't like that - some are more active than others, some are lazy - and the ones that are proactive start resenting the less active ones, thus wanting a 'better deal'.

Happens in life, happens in work, happens in politics.

The whole concept that people were fed for years on the 'trickle down' effect has been shown to be a lie, or at least greatly exaggerated, and, as you said, the real driving force behind any country are the everyday people - the workers/consumers - that keep it ticking over, not the billionaires.

Entwistle · 56-60, M

@PDXNative1986 Many millions of us knew Brexit would be a disaster. It was based on lies.
Latest Government figures say it's costing the British economy £100 billion pounds a year in lost sales alone.