The United Kingdom and the neoliberal attraction

“We have cut ourselves off from the largest and richest free trade market in history when we were at its core. What happened to all the Brexit benefits we keep hearing about?” It is a condition of the keyword John Major, a politician who did not finish his studies, but who speaks with precision, intelligence and clarity that Boris Johnson, an excellent student from Oxford, would like for himself. But the BBC journalist questions it again: “Well, maybe the advantages “They haven’t arrived yet…” And the former prime minister replies: “No, look, it was going to be honey and milk right away, and it wasn’t like that e. “Brexit was sold to the country on the basis of things that did not happen and could not have happened. “

That “honey and milk” is different from the mantra of Keir Starmer, the new prime minister: “It will take time and sacrifice to put the UK back together”. The voters may have put honesty above ideology, but the fact is that Starmer (who was a Labor member at the time and for whom some opinion polls are already showing a lower popularity than the his predecessor, Rishi Sunak) was taken as a blank check to enforce surprise. measures for social democrats, for example cutting energy benefits to 11 million retirees… just before winter. “I have to choose between keeping warm and eating or going into debt,” Chrissie reports on televisiona former nurse who has worked in public health for 25 years. But the thing does not end there. In an unprecedented response, the Labor Party has suspended seven MPs for supporting an amendment by the Scottish National Party which sought to scrap the upper limit of two children to benefits birth, which the Conservative Government introduced in 2017. In addition to hardship, to the prince He also seems to like vaunted pragmatism, because that’s the reason she traveled to Italy to congratulate Giorgia Meloni for her efforts against illegal immigration and learn from their new ways of working, especially the disgraceful Italian migrant centers in Albania.

Behind the rhetoric of pragmatism and independence there is usually nothing good. As this is our first argument it means that other principles, such as responsibility or care for vulnerable people, are suspended. Citing the isolation of time (as Starmer does, insisting on the bad faith received, saying in patent leather words that “everything will get worse before it starts it gets better”) is always a temptation to push the limit a little further and make sacrifices. that they are just rubbish, like leaving poor pensioners without fuel in the winter. Let’s not forget that the liberals became neoliberals in places like the United Kingdom, but what worries us is that the supposed social democrats are also traveling this way. We have been preaching for 20 years the need to make sacrifices in the name of a cause (getting out of the crisis, reclaiming our role in the world and other calls), but there will be problems always rise and, then, governments continue with more sacrifices, motivated by the idea that the tribute already paid invites us to continue. And what happens about Thomas de Quincey in Rebellion of the Tatars, halfway there are as many reasons to keep going as there are to turn around. With the pandemic, and before, it seemed that the EU was at least turning around. The British are still determined to continue.