Tuesday, July 2, 2019

Wrong Approach to a "No Deal Brexit"

From today's Open Europe news summary:

Chancellor: No Deal Brexit would eliminate Treasury’s fiscal reserves

The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Philip Hammond, warned yesterday, “The ‘fiscal firepower’ we have built up in case of a No Deal Brexit will only be available if we leave with an orderly transition. If not, it will all be needed to plug a hole a No Deal Brexit will make in the public finances.” This comes after both Conservative Party leadership contenders, Jeremy Hunt and Boris Johnson, promised in the last few days to use some of the £26.6bn allocated for a No Deal Brexit in the last budget for additional public spending.
Open Europe’s Henry Newman told BBC Radio London yesterday, “The Chancellor has kept a fiscal headroom… in the event of No Deal, but it will be up to the next Chancellor to decide how they balance the books. In a No Deal scenario, it will always be open to the Government to fund emergency spending through borrowing.”
Source: Guardian
It seems that governments everywhere just cannot rid themselves of the fallacy that increased government spending is the panacea to all political problems. Rather than increase spending in the case of a No Deal Brexit, the UK should slash government spending, scrap counterproductive regulations on business, and adopt unilateral free trade. In other words, GET GOVERNMENT OUT OF THE WAY. Then British business can adopt quickly to the new economic reality. The cost of living will fall, benefiting every British citizen. Such a policy would send a powerful and hopeful message to EU skeptics in the rest of Europe and hasten the EU's demise. The EU is nothing more than a backdoor method to turn all of Europe into a socialist command economy.