Thursday 12 October 2017

Project Fear And Reality

I see Brexiteers going on about 'Project Fear' every time someone issues a warning about a possible consequence of Brexit. 'Project Fear' is actually an invention of honest Boris and his colleagues such as 'easiest negotiation in history' Liam Fox and 'difficult and complex' negotiation David Davis.

It must be very nice to have no fear, but as someone who taught skydiving full time for six years, who has raced single seater cars and solo motorcycles and sailed thousands of Blue Water Miles, my observation is that fear keeps you alive. A lack of fear can have the opposite effect, which is fine if it's just you, but the Brexiteers want to take the rest of us with them.

Warnings have value too, if I saw someone about to step out in front of a bus I'd shout a warning, I wouldn't hold back in case I scared them.

Brexiteers are desperate to make out that the Remain camp lied, because they know just how deceitful, dishonest and manipulative their campaign truly was. Some of the warnings from the Remain camp may prove too dire, but many of the claims of Leave were laughable, there is a difference.

Within days of the referendum we got the knee jerk reaction of the Bank Of England, cutting the near impossible to cut interest rates, printing money and encouraging lending and surprise surprise people spent money and Brexiteers crowed that everything was fine, the economy was booming. Long before Article 50 was even triggered. Which says everything you need about their understanding of how things work.

In fact the pound promptly fell and short term exports went up, but the downside of increased costs of raw materials and price rises of imported goods, including essentials like food are now being felt. Meanwhile other countries like Canada and the USA are raising interest rates. Given a weak pound and rising inflation we should naturally raise our interest rates, but suddenly the Bank Of England seems to have become aware that household debt is at record levels and raising interest rates will hurt people and stop them spending, oops and oh dear, damned if you do and damned if you don't.

Many of the warnings of so called 'Project Fear' are coming true and more will follow. We pay our National Debt in pounds by the way, no likelihood of that coming down anytime soon, that's the debt by the way, not the deficit, if you don't appreciate the difference you shouldn't be voting.

Many things are happening which weren't warned about, for one thing there is a shortage of prison officers, police officers, doctors, nurses and teachers and what is the government doing? Well nothing really, the day job of government is completely forgotten due to Brexit. There is also a crisis in social care; someone I know who qualified for nursing care months ago just died without ever receiving it and of course the Universal Credit scheme is shambolic and most of those who face retirement in the next few years are unsure what pension they'll get. Arch Brexiteer Iain Duncan Smith was the man who improved everything so much in many of these areas.

Not sure but it may also have been his idea to pay housing benefit direct to the claimant, and not to the landlord. Someone I know will soon be evicting a tenant who has spent all her housing benefit on herself rather than pay the rent. One upshot is that the landlord who hasn't had an income will pay less tax to the treasury, perhaps an unforeseen circumstance the government might regret. Another is that the local council will have to re house the tenant and her children and quite possibly the tenant will declare bankruptcy so that no one gets paid back.

The politicians pushing Brexit are clearly not the sharpest knives and none of the huge problems mentioned above are being dealt with, largely because of the obsession with Brexit and the lack of money. Deride the warnings as 'Project Fear' if you like, did you hear about the guy who did a bungee jump without clipping on first? It's true, a lack of fear makes you careless.

Malcolm Snook