Category Archives: Brexit

1. Behind Britains turmoil, an unfinished Brexit  The Christian Science Monitor
2. Brexit, Rishi Sunak, and the reason the U.K. is such a mess right now.  Slate
3. What everyone knows but no one says about Brexit  The Spectator
4. UK impacted by a Brexit-induced crisis  New Straits Times
5. Brexit is the hot potato Sunak can neither swallow nor spit out  News9 LIVE
6. View Full Coverage on Google News

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Behind Britains turmoil, an unfinished Brexit - The Christian Science Monitor

1. Is Brexit at the roots of British Prime Minister Liz Truss' quick exit?  NPR
2. The Brexit cult that blew up Britain  POLITICO Europe
3. The Brexit cult blowing up Britain - POLITICO  POLITICO
4. EU media and leaders blame Brexit for UK political insanity as Truss quits  The Guardian
5. Britains Crisis Brexit Revenge and Why We Need to Bring Back Boris  Kyiv Post
6. View Full Coverage on Google News

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Is Brexit at the roots of British Prime Minister Liz Truss' quick exit? - NPR

Brexit sparked greater attachment to the European Union in UK and EU citizens living abroad, survey suggests  The Conversation

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Brexit sparked greater attachment to the European Union in UK and EU citizens living abroad, survey suggests - The Conversation

ROME, Oct 17 (Reuters) - Britain's political and economic turmoil has been greeted with thinly veiled satisfaction among pro-European and leftist politicians abroad, with some commentators drawing parallels to chaotic Italy.

New British finance minister Jeremy Hunt will set out tax and spending measures on Monday, two weeks earlier than scheduled, as he races to stem a dramatic loss of investor confidence in Prime Minister Liz Truss's government. read more

"How's Brexit going?" tweeted veteran Belgian politician Guy Verhofstadt, an ardent pro-European, on Saturday. "One thing is for sure: the mess didn't start in 2022 but in 2016," he added, in reference to Britain's referendum to leave the EU.

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There was a similar hint of schadenfreude in remarks by Spain's Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, who slammed Truss's original tax cut proposals as Britain's crisis unfolded last week.

"The neoliberal path failed in the previous financial crisis, created a great deal of suffering and will again lead to failure for those who follow it as we have just seen in the UK," he told the Spanish parliament.

Truss on Friday fired her finance minister Kwasi Kwarteng to replace him with Hunt, and scrapped parts of the government's economic package after it sparked a financial market rout including a steep dive in the value of the pound.

With the Conservative party plunging in opinion polls, social media has been full of memes and jokes revelling in its woes.

"Did you hear Kwasi Kwarteng flew back from the U.S. first class? Apparently they didn't want him near Business or Economy" read one joke doing the rounds on Twitter in reference to Kwarteng's rushed return from Washington to be fired by Truss.

Outside Europe, U.S. President Joe Biden called Britain's plan to scrap the 45% top income tax rate a "mistake".

Biden, a Democrat, frequently criticizes conservative "trickle down" economic policies, associated in the United States with former President Ronald Reagan and Republicans.

"I think that the idea of cutting taxes on the super wealthy at a time when - anyway, I just think - I disagreed with the policy," he told reporters in Oregon on Saturday. read more

Even Britain's staunchly conservative newspaper the Telegraph, which backed the Brexit referendum, acknowledged in a column on Sunday that its economic goals had failed.

"Britain's transformation into the new Italy is almost complete," was the headline of the article which drew numerous parallels between the two countries' economic declines and political instability.

Britain has had four prime ministers in the last six years, a new trend akin to Rome's notorious revolving door governments.

Officials in Washington last week for International Monetary Fund meetings said the upheaval in London could prove a salutary lesson for high-debt Italy, which has just elected a right-wing coalition also promising unfunded tax cuts.

"We have a lesson to learn perhaps, because what happened showed how volatile the situation is and so how prudent we should be with our fiscal and monetary mix," EU Economics Commissioner Paolo Gentiloni, an Italian, told a news conference without naming Italy directly. read more

Other officials in Washington were more open, speaking on condition of anonymity.

"The UK example of how quickly and aggressively markets can turn on you, is likely to keep Italian policy cautious. I am sure Rome is watching carefully what is happening in the UK," one senior euro zone official said.

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Additional reporting by John Chalmers and Jan Strupczewski in Brussels, David Latona in Madrid and Jeff Mason in Washington, Editing by William Maclean

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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'How's Brexit going?' British politics mocked at home and abroad - Reuters UK

Since the 1990s Ive been interpreting events in Britain for an American audience through my journalism. Sometimes its easy: Londons glorious renaissance, Tony Blairs rise. Sometimes its less easy: the strangeness of a special relationship where one side cares too much and the other too little, the post-imperial hangover that courses through British life.

And sometimes its hard: the puzzle of Brexit, the precipitous downfall of the Conservative party. It helps that for Americans still living through the Donald Trump saga, nothing is outside the realm of possibility any more. It also helps when I explain to them that those two latest chapters of British history are connected.

I tell them that from the 2016 referendum onward, Brexit increasingly gave the Tories a focus. Never mind that Brexit was the most divisive event in postwar Britain; over time, the struggle to make it happen unified the party. Boris Johnsons Get Brexit Done 2019 election campaign cemented the transformation and, as far as Brexit went, silenced Labour.

Within six weeks, however, the Tory tide would turn. Once Britain formally left the EU, the Brexit-imposed discipline within the Conservative party began to unravel. Admittedly, the pandemic would have thrown any government off course, but Johnsons conduct in office didnt help the Tory brand or party unity. Swamped by scandal, he was out. Enter Liz Truss.

As the US and the world looked on, Trusss first weeks in office did not exactly restore confidence in Downing Street. Suddenly, the new government was shredding the Tories reputation for fiscal prudence and sound economic management. Friends of mine in the States could barely believe what they were witnessing. Even Americans who are ideologically opposed to the Conservatives were shocked to see the party of Churchill and Thatcher flying off the rails.

The Truss-Kwasi Kwarteng Growth Plan 2022 started out as a budget at war with itself, with vast emergency spending sitting alongside big unfunded tax cuts. It was also at war with Bank of England monetary policy. That was bad enough. Then came U-turns, the defenestration of Kwarteng and the naming of a new chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, hardly an ideological soulmate of the libertarian prime minister.

This story is far from over. From the outset, the reaction to the new governments fiscal event abroad was awful. Former US Treasury secretary Larry Summers said the worlds fifth-largest economy was behaving a bit like an emerging market. President Biden himself said that Trusss original plan was a mistake. The International Monetary Fund, which usually reserves its sermonising for developing economies, said: we do not recommend large and untargeted fiscal packages at this juncture, as it is important that fiscal policy does not work at cross purposes to monetary policy. Furthermore, the nature of the UK measures will likely increase inequality.

Still, with all the opprobrium heaped on Truss, its easy to forget that the damage began long before she got hold of Britains finances. Whats happening today cannot be separated from what happened in the last decade, leading up to Brexit. To explain those days to non-Britons, you have to wade into the weeds of British politics. There, we come upon Nigel Farage, who though never elected to parliament had an extraordinary influence on Westminster politics. Had it not been for the threat Farage and Ukip posed to the Conservative party, David Cameron may never have decided to call for a referendum. But, fatefully, he did.

As a dual US-UK citizen whos lived in London since 1996, the closest I could get to understanding a rationale behind Brexit was to see it in the context of what Blair once called post-empire malaise a vague if deep-seated yearning to regain the confidence and sureness of identity that, at least in the imagination, went hand in hand with running an empire. Take back control was surely part of that, fuelled also by heightened economic insecurity in the wake of the 2007-08 financial crisis and a concomitant unease about immigration.

Setting that logic aside, I have to say that virtually all the economic arguments in favour of Brexit looked specious at best and cynically misleading at worst. In that sense, Brexit is a kind of original sin that sits at the heart of todays UK economy. That should have been evident in the myriad dire economic forecasts blithely dismissed as remoaner scaremongering in the run-up to the 2016 referendum forecasts that turned out to be mostly accurate. And it should have been obvious as it was to the rest of the world in the downward trajectory of the Brexit pound, which fell from 1.50 to 1.33 to the dollar overnight after the 23 June 2016 vote and ultimately hit its lowest-ever recorded level of 1.03 on 26 September of this year.

Being liberated from the EU was never going to live up to the counterfeit promises made by the Vote Leave campaign before the referendum. Britains borders are no less porous than they were. The post-Brexit trade deals the UK has negotiated are insignificant compared with the loss of its largest trading partner. The jewel-in-the-crown deal with the US is not even on the agenda, as Truss admitted last month.

The pandemic, whose arrival coincided with Britains departure from Europe, camouflaged much of the toll Brexit was inflicting on the economy. But the harm is real. A year ago, the Office for Budget Responsibility was estimating that Brexits long-term impact on economic growth would be more than twice as damaging as that of Covid.

The effect on trade has been devastating. Modelling by the Centre for European Reform found that solely because of Brexit, British trade in goods was down during the first half of last year, ranging between 11 and 16% month to month. There is evidence that businesses face new and significant real-world challenges in trading with the EU that cannot be attributed to the pandemic, the House of Lords European affairs committee reported in December.

Ending the free movement of labour between Britain and the continent a Brexit cornerstone is hollowing out the workforce. According to the Office for National Statistics, the number of job vacancies stood at 1,246,000 in the third quarter of this year, up from about 823,000 before Brexit and Covid-19 set in. These shortages afflict businesses large and small, from cafes and pubs to farms and manufacturing plants.

Meanwhile, the OBR analysis from May shows a number of economic indicators all going in the wrong direction: as a result of leaving the EU, long-term productivity will slump by 4%, both exports and imports will be around 15% lower in the long run, newly signed trade deals with non-EU countries will not have a material impact, and the governments new post-Brexit migration regime will reduce net inward migration at a time of critical labour shortages. It has been some story to tell.

Theres a scene in the House Commons that keeps playing in my head. Its 2019 and Jacob Rees-Mogg, now Trusss business secretary, is speaking of the broad, sunlit uplands that await us thanks to Brexit. Then I contemplate where Britain is today: heading into a protracted recession under an enfeebled prime minister leading a wounded, fractious party. I hope Im proved wrong, and those sunlit uplands are out there over the horizon. No sign as yet. But Id be pleased to come back and tell everyone who has listened so far that I was mistaken.

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Economy in crisis, Tories in meltdown: how I have told the sad, strange story of Britain - The Guardian

A national poll about the impacts of leaving the European Union reveals distinctive and in some ways surprising London attitudes

In the 2016 referendum, London stood out as the most Remain-supporting region in Britain. Yet, despite Londoners widespread opposition to leaving the European Union, they are more open-minded than we might think and are anxious to make Brexit work.

New national polling by YouGov for psychological think tank NOUS this month finds that Londoners within the sample are less fatigued by Brexit discussions than other regions across the country, with only 19% of Londoners not wanting to hear our politicians talking about Brexit anymore, compared to 27% of the rest of the UK.

However, Londoners are feeling the weight of Brexit. Currently, 63% of them believe Brexit has had a negative impact on Britain, compared to a 55% national average. Four in five Londoners believe the British economy has weakened since January 2021, with 68% of them attributing Britains predicted economic recession to Brexit.

Londoners are also the most likely to report negative impacts on Britains trade with the EU post-Brexit. A majority of 54% said there had been a decline in trade with the EU, compared to 47% of the country at large, and more Londoners (68%) reported fewer goods being available in shops since Brexit.

On top of this, Londoners are experiencing the impacts on travel more acutely too. With a highly international population served by a number of airports, Londoners travel to EU countries more than people in other regions. As can then be expected, a total of 65% of residents in the capital the highest proportion in the country believe that travel has become more difficult post-Brexit, compared to 47% in the Midlands and Wales, the regions that report the least change in travel habits in the UK.

These negative personal experiences very likely play a role in Brexits deeper unpopularity in the capital, but also inform Londoners determination to make Brexit work.

It is clear that Londoners want change. Only 11% believe we should continue our current relationship with the EU. A clear majority, 59%, would like to revisit the terms of the Brexit deal. Contrary to stereotypes that London is out of sync with the rest of the country, some 55% of the national population also believe that the terms of the Brexit deal should be revisited in a sign of wider discontent with the situation as it stands.

Londoners are more open minded than we think about the issue, despite common assumptions that they live in a liberal bubble. They are more unsure than the people of any other region whether they identify as Leavers or Remainers, and identify less as Remainers than they did at the time of the referendum. The new Prime Minister should take note of the capitals open willingness to work with Brexit rather than against it.

Amelia Staples works for NOUS (formerly Global Future).

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Amelia Staples: Londoners more concerned by Brexit's impacts than other Britons yet keener to make it work - onlondon.co.uk

For some, the whole project was supposed to be a celebration of Britains departure from the EU. Which means there is more than a little irony in the fact a main concern of the festival of Brexit organisers was the impact of leaving itself.

Disruption to the supply of workers and materials, as well as increased costs, emerged as one of the risks overshadowing the project, according to records.

The 120m festival was controversial from the moment it was first announced by Theresa May in 2018, but this week was in the firing line once again after the spending watchdog said it is investigating after a series of rebrandings Unboxed: Creativity in the UK amid concern visitor numbers were less than 1% of early targets.

Though the festival failed to win over many who voted remain in 2016, some in the arts sector are suspicious the latest attacks have been led by Tory politicians, with some already on record as being unhappy at an apparent drift from the original idea of a post-Brexit festival that would showcase the best of British creativity.

Days after Julian Knight, the Tory chair of the Commons culture committee, said the project had been a catastrophic failure, its organisers remained guarded while there was no sign of its chief creative officer, the arts impresario Martin Green.

Among the few festival partners to speak out in defence of the festival was Liz Pugh of the outdoor arts organisation, Walk the Plank, who argued that the festivals legacy and true value would become apparent in the longer term and would outweigh the current focus on spending.

At the moment there is a feeling that the bean counters are not happy with how many beans there are, and that roots it very much in a financial and economic framework. Of course there needs to be accountability and value for public money, but we should allow for the other benefits as well, said Pugh. Her company was involved in the production of 20 large-scale outdoor artworks in secret locations across outstanding landscapes.

The festival, which runs until mid November, was unprecedented in the way arts companies had come together with collaborators in science and technology, creating internships and roles for students in the midst of a pandemic, she said, adding that they wouldnt have anything to do with it if it had been about Brexit.

I think that in years to come there will be many exciting things happening in the arts, and beyond, that came out of conversations that started during Unboxed, said Pugh.

Phil Batty, executive director of Unboxed, also pushed back agains Knights claims, adding: The project isnt an unmitigated disaster. It has really gone out of its way to engage people in all corners of the UK.

Like others involved in the 120m project, Batty believes there will be a strong success story to tell the National Audit Office (NAO) as well as a legacy in the form of job creation and investment across the arts sector even if its efforts were hampered by being associated with Brexit.

From the outset, it was never designed to be a Brexit festival that was never in a brief we were given. We were set two objectives by all the governments of the UK. The first was to bring people together. The second was to celebrate creativity, he added. Batty reiterated final visitor numbers will be far in excess of the figure of 240,000 frequently cited this week as the number that had visited events.

Brexit appears at no point in the published minutes of meetings convened over the past two years by the festivals board of committees and audit committee though it makes an indirect appearance in those from a meeting in September last year, which state: A new risk around logistics including purchasing commodities form the EU and the changing macro environment was identified including supply chain, tech and production, goods like timber, technology chips and labour market.

Other minutes show organisers continued to monitor a range of risks to the project, though only a sliver of the discussions are recorded. Those from a meeting in April last year, referred to the festivals branding, stating: It was noted that there are political sensitives to be considered.

Minutes from a meeting last January refer to reputational risk concerning the geographic spread of live events, but add: All committee members felt the conversation to debate new locations had passed and would now be a distraction from delivery. The chair would inform the board that the focus is now on reach of current activity.

Other records, such as a list of big ticket areas of expenditure which will be a focus of the NAO investigation, show how the project was a boon for a small group of consultants, particularly those working in branding, advertising and marketing.

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How Brexit nearly scuppered the festival of Brexit - The Guardian

The UKs Brexit divorce bill stood at 41.8bn (36.7bn) in 2021, according to the EUs official auditors.

The European court of auditors annual report revealed that the UK was expected to make 10.9bn in payments to the EU during 2022.

The Brexit divorce bill was down from 47.5bn (41.7bn) in 2020, reflecting payments made by the British government.

Tony Murphy, the president of the European court of auditors, said the final amount the UK pays to the EU was not expected to change much. Overall its pretty stable; there could be some adjustment, but I dont think it will be that significant.

EU estimates of the Brexit financial settlement have tended to be higher than those of the British government, which forecast Brexit spending commitments between 35 and 39bn.

The Treasury, however, in July revised the Brexit bill upwards by 5bn, from 37.3bn to 42.5b, blaming the rising cost on meeting the UKs obligations to pay EU staff pensions.

The Brexit financial settlement largely consists of EU projects the UK agreed to co-fund during its time as a member state, a category worth 28.6bn, according to the court of auditors. The second largest component, 14bn, is the cost of EU staff pensions, reflecting liabilities incurred during Britains 47 years of membership. Smaller elements include loan guarantees offered by EU member states, including the UK, to countries such as Ukraine.

When Britain left the EU on 31 January 2020, it had agreed a way to calculate the divorce bill, but not a figure. The final total depends on variables such as projects being cancelled, actuarial estimates changing, and EU loans going bad.

The report was published amid an improvement in EU-UK relations. Liz Truss, in contrast with her domestic troubles, smoothed relations with European neighbours last week by attending a European summit in Prague that brought together EU and non-EU countries to discuss the war in Ukraine.

Archie Bland and Nimo Omer take you through the top stories and what they mean, free every weekday morning

EU diplomats, however, say they have few illusions about her stance on the EU. The governments emollient tone on the Northern Ireland protocol is attributed to its domestic troubles and turbulence on financial markets, which are seen as reducing appetite for a trade war with the EU.

A UK government spokesperson said: These figures were originally published in the EUs 2021 annual accounts and are consistent with the Treasurys latest estimates. We recognise the importance of ensuring that taxpayers money is well spent and are committed to transparency we regularly report these figures to parliament.

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UKs Brexit divorce bill stood at 36.7bn in 2021, EU audit reveals - The Guardian

BELFAST British and European negotiators are working to agree a way forward on post-Brexit trade arrangements that will give Britain enough political cover to avoid snap elections in Northern Ireland, Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney said Wednesday.

Speaking after he met four of the five main parties in Northern Irelands crippled legislature, Coveney suggested that a framework agreement on simplifying EU-required checks at local ports could be announced on or shortly before October 28.

That date is the last day under existing rules of Northern Ireland power-sharing for a new cross-community administration to be formed at Stormont, the government base overlooking Belfast.

The main pro-British party, the Democratic Unionists, say they wont permit this unless the EU agrees to end all checks and restrictions on British goods staying in Northern Ireland. The DUP declined to send any representatives Wednesday to meet Coveney, citing unspecified diary conflicts.

Britains secretary of state for Northern Ireland, Chris Heaton-Harris, has said he will be legally bound to set a date for new Northern Ireland Assembly elections on October 28 exactly 48 weeks after the current assemblys first deadlocked sitting if the DUP doesnt end its obstruction by then.

However, Coveney said this publicly rigid deadline could be set aside if ongoing London-Brussels dialogue overseen by U.K. Foreign Secretary James Cleverly and the European Commissions point man on Brexit, Maro efovi, sufficiently narrows the ground between them.

Coveney noted that the existing law would require Britain to set a new Stormont election date if there isnt a way forward by the 28th.

"I dont think anybody wants to do that," he told reporters at a hotel near Stormont.

However, he expressed hope that this "way forward," outlining common ground already achieved and issues still to be resolved, could be published on or shortly before that date.

Were working hard to try to ensure that the Cleverly-efovi teams focus on what is possible this side of the 28th of October, Coveney told reporters.

The goal, he said, is to achieve enough U.K.-EU consensus within the next two weeks to provide an alternative to a new election cycle in Northern Ireland.

Leaders of four local parties the center-ground Alliance Party, the Irish nationalists of Sinn Fin and the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP), and the Ulster Unionists said they agreed with Coveney that an election should be avoided if possible.

All recalled previous crises in Stormont power-sharing when British governments publicly set supposedly make-or-break deadlines for agreement, only to shift those deadlines to create more space for talks.

Alliance leader Naomi Long, justice minister in Northern Irelands currently leaderless government, said forcing her and other remaining ministers from their jobs on October 28 would needlessly create a political void at a time of unprecedented crisis.

Reflecting other parties' bad blood with the Democratic Unionists, Long sparred online with DUP Agriculture Minister Edwin Poots, who avoided Wednesday's meetings.

Ulster Unionist leader Doug Beattie called the October 28 deadline artificial and really unhelpful because it would discourage good negotiations.

It will harden positions. It will drive people to the trenches, he said, suggesting that any election re-run would strengthen hardliners at the expense of moderates.

In the May election, Sinn Fin overtook the DUP for the first time, putting outgoing Deputy First Minister Michelle O'Neill in line for the top post of first minister and reducing the DUP's share of ministerial posts.

Several DUP figures told POLITICO at their annual party conference last weekend that they see a snap election as offering a potential opportunity to reverse that outcome. The DUP, which currently has 25 assembly seats versus Sinn Fin's 27, would target up to three seat gains in the next election.

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Ireland: Progress on Brexit protocol talks could shelve Belfast election that nobody wants - POLITICO Europe

Hard to believe now, when were in the middle of the maelstrom, but one day this too will be the past. And when it is, when were out of the hourly psychodrama no longer staring at the screen, watching Kwasi Kwartengs plane do an actual U-turn in the sky en route to his being fired on touchdown, for the crime of doing what his boss wanted him to do it may not look all that complicated.

Historians will look back and see a point of origin to the current madness, one that explains how a new prime minister could see her administration fall apart in a matter of weeks, even if we struggle to name that cause out loud right now. When the textbooks of the future come to the chapter we are living through, in the autumn of 2022, they will start with the summer of 2016: Brexit and the specific delusion that drove it.

They will point to the obvious impact of Britains decision to leave the European Union, and the role that played in upending a country once renowned for its stability. They might begin with the basics. Exit, they will write, shrank the UK economy thanks to a 5.2% fall in GDP, a 13.7% fall in investment and a similar drop in the trade in goods. That self-inflicted contraction helps explain why Britain felt international shocks surging inflation, for example harder than most. If your economy is smaller, you either have to tax people more to pay for the services they expect, or you cut those services, or you borrow. There are no other ways out.

Unless you resort to magical thinking. Which brings us to the second causal connection between the craziness of now and the turning point of 2016. Brexit broke the link between governance and reason, between policy and evidence. Until Brexit, politicians only rarely got away with defying the empirical facts or elementary logic. But in 2016 they pretended that a country could weaken its trading ties to its nearest neighbours and get richer, which is like saying you can step in a bath of ice and get warmer. Once the taboo on magical thinking was broken, once fantasy became a Conservative habit, Trussonomics became inevitable smilingly insisting that you could cut taxes for the richest, make absolutely no cuts to public services and control borrowing, all at the same time.

But there is a less obvious way in which Brexit made the current great unravelling a political death foretold. It turns on the idea that powered the urge to leave the EU more than any other: call it the sovereignty delusion.

The leavers slogan, Take back control, urged Britons to shake off the constraints of Brussels and become a proud, sovereign nation once more a nation that, alone, would decide its fate. After Brexit, they promised, Britain would be the sole master of its destiny, unburdened by the need to consult or even accommodate anyone else.

The three weeks since Kwarteng delivered his mini-budget have seen the shattering of that delusion. For Truss and her now ex-chancellor were given the rudest of reminders that in our interdependent world there is no such thing as pure, untrammelled sovereignty. No government can do what the hell it likes, heedless of others. In this case, the restraint on sovereignty was not the EU: it was the money markets. But their verdict was as binding as any Brussels edict; in fact it was more so. They ordered the removal of a chancellor after just 38 days in office and the cancellation of the governments economic strategy. It is the financial markets that have taken back control.

None of these events should be a surprise. There were plenty who warned this would happen, not least Trusss summer opponent, Rishi Sunak. But Truss and Kwarteng went ahead anyway, issuing their proclamations as if they were the sole actors on the stage, oblivious to the fact that you cant just announce 43bn of unfunded tax cuts without those whom you expect to lend you the money expressing a view in this case by triggering an instant spike in the cost of borrowing. You cannot simply bypass the official spending scrutineer, the Office for Budget Responsibility, without the markets concluding that youve become unpredictable and, therefore unreliable, a bad risk.

As remainers were mocked for pointing out six long years ago, there is no such thing as unfettered sovereignty in the 21st century: every country has to accommodate its neighbours, the global economy, reality. But the leavers, and their zealous convert Truss, refused to hear it. When Sunak tried to spell out these rudimentary facts, Conservative party members thought he was being a spoilsport. The Treasury permanent secretary, Tom Scholar, was seen as the embodiment of such boring, reality-based thinking, and so Truss fired him.

This week Sanjay Raja, chief UK economist of Deutsche Bank, told a Commons committee that Britain was facing a unique form of trade shock: We havent seen this kind of trade deficit since 1955, since national account records began. It was odd, because I too had been thinking about the mid-1950s, specifically the Suez crisis of 1956. The failure of that military adventure is now seen as the moment when a bucket of cold reality was thrown into Britains face, a humiliation that stripped the country of its imperial delusions, forcing it to accept that it was no longer a global superpower that could act alone. For a while, Britain learned that lesson: just five years after Suez, the country was knocking on Europes door, asking to join the club.

But some, especially in the Conservative party, never shook off the old delusion. By 2016, it was back, the Tories high on Brexit talk of a global Britain once again sailing the worlds oceans, free of the constraining hand of the EU, ready to return to its rightful grandeur. The Tories have been breathing those fumes for six years, and the Truss-Kwarteng mini-budget was the result: the Suez of economic policy, a disastrous act of imagined imperial sovereignty.

As several economists have noted, Truss was acting as if Britain were the US, issuer of the worlds reserve currency, with markets falling over themselves to lend it money. Like Anthony Eden before her, she could not accept that Britains place is not what it was: it can never be sovereign like a king in a fairytale, able to bend the world to his will. That kind of sovereignty was always a fantasy, one that both fed Brexit and was fed by it.

Now she has had to make a concession to reality, laying down the political life of her friend and abandoning what had been a signature policy. She is not in charge of events; she is not even in charge of her own government. Jeremy Hunt was an appointment forced on her. Her demeanour in her afternoon press conference on Friday shell-shocked, brittle suggested she has not absorbed the full meaning of what has just happened.

She is finished, a hollow husk of a prime minister. But this is bigger than that. The Brexit bubble has burst. The country has seen that the Tory hallucination of an island able to command the tides was no more than a fever dream, and a dangerous one at that. We can pronounce Trussonomics dead. Bring on the day we can say the same of the delusion that spawned it.

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The markets have taken back control: so much for Trusss Brexit delusion of sovereignty - The Guardian