THE POLITICAL CHAOS IN THE UK: FROM BREXIT TO LIZ TRUSS’S RESIGNATION

After WW2, the United Kingdom was struggling to recover its economic prosperity and its empire was vanishing in Africa and Asia with the decolonization movement. At the same time, countries of Western Europe were consolidating an economic and political integration, founding first in 1951 the European Coal and Steel Community, and then, in 1957, the European Economic Community (EEC). This created a free-trade zone and a common political ground that was ensuring a solid political cooperation between its members, which eventually led them to have higher GDP growth compared to the UK.

Finally, in 1973, the UK and Ireland decided to join the successful EEC and later became founding members of the European Union when it was established with the Treaty of Maastricht in 1993. However, the UK had a problematic relationship from the beginning with the European project. It kept a big amount of opt-outs regarding European legislation about the judicial system, border controls and the monetary union, so the UK was never completely ‘inside’ the EU.

These reservations about European integration were based on the UK’s self-image of being a world power that was never invaded during WW1 and WW2, due to its geopolitical situation of being detached from the continent. Additionally, it had economic cycles that were more connected to the US and British former colonies, so the EU was not a priority as for Germany and France. This national identity was expressed in many surveys carried out during the last decades in which it was consistently shown that fewer Britons consider themselves Europeans than any other EU nationality.

Despite that, the same polls showed that most of the Brits were very happy to be part of the EU, but things started to change with the financial crisis of 2007-2009. It exposed coordination problems within the EU to lead an economic recovery, harsh austerity plans were imposed and many southern countries, like Greece, Italy and Spain especially, wanted extra support from richer countries. As a result, during the years 2010-2014, GDP growth in the EU averaged just around 1%, a lower figure compared to 2.5% for the US and 4% for the rest of the world.

Moreover, immigration to the UK from poorer ex-communist countries that were recently admitted into the EU, and refugees coming from Muslim countries, was creating tensions in some communities. As a result, the EU executive branch, the European Commission, was increasingly portrayed as an ineffective, bureaucratic, unelected body that was preventing GDP growth and had too much influence on internal matters in the UK.

This sentiment resulted in a political alliance between libertarians that dreamed of “transforming London into a new Singapore or Dubai” in order to boost the economy, left-wing groups and industries that opposed EU’s trade policies, and nationalistic movements like the populist UKIP (UK Independence Party) that were specially worried about immigration. The common request of them was to ‘unchain the UK from the supranational EU’ in order to recover sovereignty.

Back in 2014, the UK was ruled by a pro-EU prime minister called David Cameron, from the conservative Tory party. In order to calm down the ‘civil war’ about the EU issue, Cameron agreed to organize a nationwide referendum to decide if the UK would remain or leave. Cameron was confident in winning the referendum because the polls were showing the victory of the “Remain” side, and could thus brand himself as a ‘true democrat that had listened to the will of the people’.

But the result of the referendum in 2016 was a catastrophe for Cameron and his side, as the Brexit option won with 51.89% of the votes. It came as a big surprise for the liberal world that branded nationalism as a backward ideology that belonged to authoritarian states. The turnout was very high: for the age groups 18-34, 35-64 and over 65 it was 64%, 80% and 89% respectively, with younger people tending to vote for “Remain”, and male voters outside big cities for “Leave”. 

The Brexit results can be explained by the fact that the movement got stronger with the refugee crisis of 2015 and the ascent of Donald Trump as a political figure in the US. The first event helped to portray the European Union as a body that had completely lost control over immigration flows; whereas the second was a moral boost, because Trump’s nationalism was now a broad political movement in a country located in the western world and that Brits could especially relate to.

Naturally, David Cameron was forced to resign after the results, and his successor, Teresa May, a “remain” Tory but critic of EU’s superpowers, tried to negotiate a ‘soft Brexit’ to save a fair trade deal with continental Europe. After three years of uncertainty without reaching any good agreement, Teresa May resigned in 2019. The Tories nominated then Boris Johnson as party leader, a strong Brexit supporter who attended the exclusive Eton College in England, was former mayor of London in 2008-2016, and a populist showman. 

Johnson won easily the 2019 national election against the hardcore left-wing and anti-Semitic candidate Jeremy Corbyn, using the slogan: “get Brexit done”. One year later, in 2020, the UK was finally out of the European Union and Johnson was poised to become a strong political figure that could stay in his post for a very long time. But then, the pandemic hit the UK, and while the population was living under strict lockdowns, Boris Johnson, who almost died at the hospital of covid, was caught off organizing parties at his office, in Downing Street Number 10.

Eventually, Johnson was forced to resign in the summer of 2022 because of this “partygate”. Due to the lack of strong figures with traditional conservative values, the Tory party agreed to nominate Liz Truss, UK’s harsh anti-Russian foreign minister during Johnson’s government, and a radical supporter of libertarian ideas of free markets. Immediately after taking office in September of this year, Truss presented a budget with massive tax cuts for the rich while keeping government’s help to households in the whole country to pay rising energy bills because of the war in Ukraine.

The problem for Truss was that the financial markets did not believe her plan could keep public finances stable and the already 10% inflation would become even worse, so the British pound hit a record low value, reaching for the first time in history a parity with the US dollar. The Bank of England condemned the economic policy of Truss as “irresponsible”, and was forced to inject 70 billion dollars into the British economy to raise interest rates in order to stop pound’s lost of value.

Finally, on Thursday last week, after trying unsuccessfully to persuade her own Tory deputies to betray their own manifesto pledge of not re-starting fracking projects in the UK, Truss was forced to resign. Her position was taken by former Exchequer (Finance) minister Rishi Sunak, a centrist Tory member and Brexit supporter. He was born in England but belongs to a millionaire Indian family, attended elite schools in economics and political science, and is pro-cryptocurrencies but advocates stable public finances in order to achieve economic growth. Sunak became the first British prime minister of color, but he has been accused of living in a ‘rich bubble’ and making classist remarks about working class people.

So far, the markets have reacted positively to his nomination, but with a rising inflation in the UK and the war in Ukraine escalating, the tenure of Rishi Sunak is expected to be far from easy.