The will imho bring in Liz Truss, who is very similar to May.



But that's the crux of the whole thing: the British economy was only dynamic and well-functioning in London and a few other, select cities while leaving large parts of the country behind. If the British economic model had worked for a clear majority of the nation, the Brexit referendum would have stood no chance of succeeding, no matter how much campaigning and demagoguery right-wing media spews.

And the decision to deindustrialize Britain and turn it into a service economy was made by Blair and Thatcher, not Cameron or Johnson.

I have a gut feeling that the plan "was"... for the 2020 Trump USA to throw Britain a few economic bones, till the UK got back on it's solo feet again.
But then Trump's 2020 plans fell through, and as a result...

I mean it wasn't like the EU was gonna make it easy for Britain.

I think it would've helped both countries.
Trump would have gotten a lot of seriously old school political backing, and the UK would have gotten some choice contracts.

At least I felt that the political wind was blowing in that direction, back during the actual Brexit.

This post was edited by Ghot on Jul 7 2022 01:12pm

scamdemic disc boris

The UK isn't much different to other countries in that regard. Look at states like California vs Kentucky, West vs East Germany, Northern Italy vs Southern Italy

The economic model at the time was austerity, which we already had for six years at the point of the EU referendum. We've had the lowest public investment as a % of GDP in the EU since 2010 except Greece, and we didn't even eliminate the deficit, never mind the debt. The evidence is overwhelming that austerity led to a poor recovery from the great recession, with productivity lagging ever since

I don't think industry is particularly relevant imo, our troubles are not due to being a service economy, even if we would have benefitted from transforming our manufacturing sector to differentiate instead of getting rid entirely when cost leadership couldn't work anymore. That was all Thatcher btw.

This post was edited by dro94 on Jul 7 2022 02:34pm

industry is really relevant imo as it can offer a good amount of jobs with solid pay for people

a well known german talk show moderator made a really interesting documentary traveling the uk and man.....when you go outside of the good parts of london the place is desolate

he interviewed people in sunderland iirc, shipwrights for like ten generations and it was all gone almost overnight

afterwards no support, no help, just a few bucks from the government that are not enough to live and too much to die, thousands of men permanently unemployed

i personally havent seen too much except newcastle myself and i was not exactly sad when i got out of the city

england looks like a heavily centralised country to me, the place might as well be empty outside of the good city districts

There are loads of rich areas in England and Scotland tbh, not just limited to London and neighbouring areas. Per capita incomes between Germany and the UK are pretty similar right now, the difference is that the UK is more unequal than Germany. The main reason why I always moan about the UK economy is not because it's worse than other Western European nations, but that we were far ahead in the 2000s

Newcastle and Sunderland are in the North East which is the poorest region in the UK

e/ and yes we are heavily centralised, to our detriment. No government has tackled the issue properly

This post was edited by dro94 on Jul 7 2022 03:23pm

None of these examples is really comparable imho. California happened to hold large reserves of a commodity (silicon) that was crucial to the industry of the future (computers, IT). East Germany actually used to be more developed and rich than the south or west before the world wars; that it's less developed and poorer today is largely the consequence of 45 years of socialist rule. Southern Italy has been structually weak going back to the time when Spanish rulers deliberately kept it down so they could more easily maintain control. Also, mafia.

By contrast, London booming economically while the vast rest of the UK suffers was a direct consequence of "recent" political decisions, made by Tories and Labour alike.



I'm not super knowledgeable on this stuff, but from what I've read, the economic malaise of northern and rural England already existed prior to 2010; austerity exacerbated, but didn't cause it.

The pits were predominantly in Northern England and after Thatcher gutted them with no support or retraining (as my friend shampoo said), those areas struggled ever since. So yes, it originated in the 80s with Thatcher. Don't forget that the industrial revolution started in Northern England and it was an industrial powerhouse well into the 1900s