“The Sick Man of Europe. The expression goes back a century and a half. Over the decades, it has designated those countries which, on the Old Continent or on its margins, are experiencing great difficulties, social or economic illnesses which may prove to be contagious or represent a more widespread evil.
It returned periodically in the American and Anglo-Saxon press, with varying combinations of irony, disdain or commiseration.
This was the Ottoman Empire in the middle of the XIXe century (in this case, a Russian emperor had first coined the phrase at the time of the Crimean War). Followed, according to a non-exhaustive list: the United Kingdom in the 1970s, Italy in 2005 (The Economist), Greece in 2009, Italy in 2013, France in 2015 (according to the American bank Morgan Stanley, symbol of New York big capital).
“The sick man” in 2022 is again the United Kingdom, when it has just officially left the European Union. A demoralized country, lacerated by inflation, social unrest, financial meltdowns, political divisions and even the specter of misery.
Never short of irony and images resorting to stereotypes, The Economist, again he, preferred last week to invent a new expression, “Britaly” (Britain + Italy), to designate the miserable state of things in the country of Albion. This immediately provoked protests from journalists in Italy… outraged that their country is now being compared to the British disaster!
Since the Brexit voted by referendum in 2016, in front of an outside world dumbfounded and scared that political chaos could have become the norm in this country, the country gallops from one crisis to another without stopping.
Liz Truss has certainly broken a record in all of British history by only spending a month and a half at 10 Downing Street. But the tremors of the last few days, with the incredible spectacle, Thursday, October 20 in the Commons, of shouting matches and public jostling between deputies of the same party in power, are only the foam of a deeper torrential current, who won four prime ministers in six years.
The clashes and tensions of this crazy week were certainly brutal, but by no means new. Brexit and the political momentum born in the heat of the referendum have only deepened some of the fractures that are tearing the country and the Conservative Party, which has been in power for 12 years, apart.
Brexit is one of the causes of this crisis, but so are the tensions within the Conservative Party. They are the ones who led to Brexit. The former Prime Minister believed in 2015 to “solve the problem” by granting his radicals a referendum (which would undoubtedly have been inevitable sooner or later), which he thought he would win with remaining in the Union. On the contrary, it has opened a Pandora’s box, giving even more power to those who until then, since 2010, have only represented a vocal minority.
The disproportionate influence of these rebels, encouraged by certain media and think tanks, ended up dividing and consuming the party from within. In 2016, the ungovernability of the Conservative Party became apparent.
Theresa May took over from David Cameron with the mission of making Brexit a reality. She failed in her attempt, unable to discipline and marginalize the toughest Brexiters. Then came Boris Johnson, a clownish adventurer of “show politics”, but also an attractive demagogue who, at the end of 2019, sought a popular mandate to “do” once and for all this Brexit promised, voted, but which did not arrive. .
He did so, winning 56% of the seats with 44% of the vote, thanks to a ragtag coalition of Brexit-bound voters, luring into his fold, with perfectly cynical Social Democrat promises, voters who had always voted Labor . On January 31, 2020 at midnight, Brexit became a reality.
The problem is that this “new coalition”, in which certain observers had believed, was nothing but window dressing. And that is what is breaking out today. Brexit, for many of its supporters, was primarily a matter of nationalism and patriotism.
But for a large fraction of the Conservative Party, it was also an opportunity to put forward the utopia of a “Singapore-on-Thames”, a country with a minimal state, freed from the supposed European regulatory obstacles, set out again the economic and financial conquest of the world.
This gave rise to the 45 days of Liz Truss, a neoliberal trend XXe century, drunk on this ideology. With his coming to power, the most feverish “Brexiters” had believed that their time had finally come. Lower taxes, lower environmental protections (shale gas, hydraulic fracturing), end of subsidized housing, etc. All this with an explosion of debt, against a backdrop of social anxiety and global inflation – but worse than elsewhere.
Markets, voters and her own fractured party violently ejected Liz Truss and what she stood for. But the country today is a drunken country in the middle of nowhere, with a conservative leadership discredited by its adventures, between dogmatism and pure opportunism, but still in power and in the majority.
What will the United Kingdom do with its regained “freedom” with Brexit? Nobody knows.
François Brousseau is an international business analyst at Ici Radio-Canada. [email protected]