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Showing posts with label Brexit. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Brexit. Show all posts

Thursday 22 June 2023

UK loses its allure and faces big investment gap


 

Big job: Sunak greets Sweden’s Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson outside Number 10 Downing Street. The survey underscores the challenge Sunak’s government has in reviving economic growth with a labour force that has shrunk since the pandemic. — Reuters

 

LONDON: The United Kingdom (UK) has fallen six places in the global economic competitiveness rankings because business leaders have lost confidence in the country, due in part to “government incompetence”.

The annual World Competitiveness Ranking from the International Institute for Management Development saw the UK plunge from 23rd to 29th out of 64 countries.

In a separate analysis, the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) warned that years of underinvestment are holding back growth and harming ambitions to build up green industries.

It estimated the nation would have received an extra £560bil (US$720bil or RM3.3 trillion) in real terms had investment from private firms and the government stayed at the Group of Seven average since 2005.

“The UK is experiencing a debilitating case of investment phobia, and the government’s aversion to investing to seize future opportunities is stopping us from getting out of the growth doom loop we find ourselves in,” said George Dibb, associate director for the economy at IPPR.

The figures underscore the challenge Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s government has in reviving economic growth with a labour force that has shrunk since the pandemic.

Political leaders from all parties are concerned about the UK’s stagnating productivity and sticky levels of inflation, which have undermined the confidence of investors both in stocks and in businesses.

In the competitiveness rank, the UK lost ground on all the key indicators, which is a worrying sign for the government, which wants to attract investment to boost growth.

Respondents said the country had become more bureaucratic, the government less efficient, and the workforce less productive.

Denmark held on to the top spot in 2023, and Ireland jumped nine places to second. Switzerland, the Netherlands and Singapore completed the top five.

“The dramatic drop in the survey indicators suggests a systemic pessimism about the future,” Arturo Bris, lead researcher on the rankings and director of the IMD World Competitiveness Centre, said in an interview. “The deterioration in business sentiment says executives are losing confidence in the country.”

More than 6,400 senior executives from across the world were interviewed for the report. Just 3% of respondents said the competency of the government made the UK an attractive destination for investment.

“Government incompetence, poor workplace culture, and restrictive immigration laws were among several reasons why the UK fared badly,” the report said.

The report also found that the UK is becoming increasingly bureaucratic, despite the government’s pledge to use “Brexit freedoms” to cut regulation. The UK fell 12 places in the bureaucracy sub-ranking from 15th to 27th, while France climbed from 44th to 41st, Bris said.

France remained less attractive than the UK, dropping five places to 33rd in the rankings. Germany fell seven places to 22nd.

The survey was conducted between February and May but reflected the political chaos of 2022, a year in which the UK got through three prime ministers and four chancellors.

The struggling economy, with inflation higher and the labour market tighter than other leading industrial nations, will have also affected sentiment badly, Bris said. — Bloomberg

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Sunday 23 October 2022

How Britain fell from grace

 

British Prime Minister Liz Truss enjoyed only seven days of full power before global economic forces effectively destroyed her government. PHOTO: REUTERS

 

 

Whatever you may think of them, the British used to enjoy the reputation of a solid, well-run and responsible nation.

A centuries-old history of peaceful political change, with none of the coups, revolutions or civil wars that seem to have afflicted most other countries worldwide. A robust parliamentary system of government in which just two political parties take their turns in holding power based on electoral procedures that produce clear-cut results and solid governments with none of the unpredictable and often unstable coalition-making that afflicts most of the rest of Europe.

To be sure, the country’s politicians have always been of variable quality. But the United Kingdom’s civil service was highly rated for its professionalism and integrity, and so was its legal system, still considered an advantage and often touted as a national asset by many countries around the world.

That’s why Britain’s sudden descent into crisis looks so surprising. In just a few weeks, the credibility of some of the most critical institutions in British national life, including the prime minister, the Treasury, the Bank of England, the ruling Conservative Party, and the nation’s asset management industry, were all torn to shreds.

The country’s currency has sunk to its lowest levels in half a century, and the risk premium international investors demand to lend money to Britain is among the highest in the industrialised world.

For the first time in modern history, the British government was forced to bow to the pressure of global financial markets and withdraw a budget it had introduced only two weeks beforehand. And in another highly unusual move, the International Monetary Fund issued a rebuke to Britain using language otherwise reserved for those who manage the economies of poor and vulnerable developing nations.

Truss versus lettuce

Consequently, British Prime Minister Liz Truss, who assumed office only last month, had to ditch her policies before these were even tried, and the speculation in London is that her days are numbered.

The influential Economist newspaper had pointed out that, if one ignores the extended period of official mourning for Queen Elizabeth II – a period during which all politics were suspended – Ms Truss enjoyed only seven days of full power before the forces of the global economy effectively destroyed her government. That, The Economist suggested, is more or less the supermarket “shelf-life of the lettuce”.

Liz Truss may never recover from this cruel jibe: a British tabloid newspaper is currently offering its readers a live video stream of a lettuce head and a photograph of the Prime Minister, accompanied by the question, “which wet lettuce will last longer?”

Britain as a whole is now the butt of international jokes. Politicians in Italy – a country that will soon get its 70th government in almost as many years – have suggested that one of their retired prime ministers may be sent to London to try his hand at managing the British because he can’t do any worse than Britain’s politicians.

Mr Kyriakos Mitsotakis, the Prime Minister of Greece, a country that a decade ago had to be bailed out from national bankruptcy by global financial institutions, told Ms Truss’ government tongue-in-cheek that if they “need experience in dealing with the International Monetary Fund, we’re here to help”.

While the attention is on the UK experience, other economies and major currencies are also currently experiencing global pressure. The British pound may be down around 18 per cent to 20 per cent, but the euro is about 15 per cent weaker, and the Chinese renminbi dropped by an average of 11 per cent against the US dollar. The Bank of Japan recently spent an estimated US$21 billion (S$30 billion) trying to prop up the yen, to no avail.

However, credibility is everything in politics, finance and economics, and the UK government finally managed to lose all of these. Britain’s previously admired institutional framework and its hard-won reputation of certainty in financial policy went down the pan over the past two weeks.

And financial volatility is accompanied by political volatility. Between 1990 and 2010 – two decades – Britain was ruled by only three prime ministers. But from 2010 to now - just over one decade - the country has already known four additional prime ministers and may yet be ready for a fifth. Furthermore, no less than four politicians have served as finance ministers since January this year. These are chaotic politics Italian-style, minus the sun-drenched beaches or the delicious pasta.

More On This Topic 

‘Cakeism’ and Brexit

How did Britain get to this sorry state? A mixture of immediate failures by the Truss administration, magnified by a much more entrenched malaise.

Ms Truss won power by resorting to the oldest trick in politics: a promise that voters can have their cake and eat it. She vowed to cut taxes and increase spending, all based on borrowing from financial markets. And she dismissed the arguments of armies of economists who pointed out that hers was not an economic policy but a fantasy.

The more she faced criticism, the more she doubled down on her promises; her pledge to cut taxes became a test of wills, which she was determined to win. So, her ill-fated budget slashed taxes much further than anyone expected and sidelined Britain’s financial regulator and the country’s civil servants.

Ms Truss quickly discovered that one should not attempt to offer a spending bonanza against the backdrop of sharply rising inflation and interest rates, a punishing global energy crisis, as well as a British current account deficit which ballooned to an unprecedented 8 per cent of gross domestic product, and all without providing any indication of how Britain intends to deal with its public finances. The Prime Minister not only ran into a flat rejection by the financial markets, she unleashed a financial rout that could only be addressed by withdrawing her entire budget.

The problem of Ms Truss was not necessarily just the financial figures she peddled but the fact that her ill-conceived budget became totemic for a more comprehensive loss of British political and economic credibility, which has been cumulative over several years. 

 

The chief culprit is Brexit, as the British withdrawal from the European Union is popularly known. The damage that Brexit inflicted on the British economy - in terms of lower growth rates, lower exports and slashed inward investment – is by now well-documented.

But a much more severe impact on British credibility has been the conduct of the country’s political elite during this divorce process from the rest of Europe. The campaign to withdraw from the EU was conducted with lies; those who supported Brexit produced made-up figures about how Britain’s trade with the rest of the world would, supposedly, more than compensate for the loss of duty-free access to European markets.

And anyone who dared contradict the Brexiters by providing actual economic facts and figures was dismissed as part of so-called “project fear”, an alleged plot by the “establishment” to keep Britain shackled to Europe.

The tactic worked not only in pulling Britain out of the EU; it also spawned an entirely new class of British politicians who believe that all they need to do is to ram their policies through regardless of what the economic realities may be and if the facts don’t accord with their views, present “alternative facts”.

During the campaign that propelled her to power, Ms Truss refused to engage in any serious discussion with the critics of her economic policy, just as Mr Boris Johnson, her predecessor as prime minister, declined to explain how Britain would thrive outside the EU. Both politicians operated on the assumption that make-believe economics can become real economics.

And the reason people like them can come to power is to be found in another negative development of British politics.

More On This Topic

Who chooses the party leader?

For many decades, the Conservatives and Labour – the country’s two major historic parties – were mass movements, counting millions of members. But the election of the party leaders who could then become prime ministers was left in the hands of the few, usually just the MPs in either party.

Over the past 15 years, however, mass party membership disappeared: Britain’s Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, for instance, has far more paid-up members than all the political parties combined.

Yet, curiously, the choice of who gets elected as party leader was taken from MPs and given to the parties’ entire membership. The result is that an unrepresentative group of party members – in the case of the ruling Conservatives, only around 160,000 people out of a total population of 68 million – decides who would rule Britain.

If it were left to the MPs alone, Ms Truss would have got nowhere near the Downing Street residence of British prime ministers. But she won on a platform of economic fantasies sold to people who wanted to believe in the enduring myth of having something for nothing.

Ultimately, it was left to the global financial markets to confront Britain with the rude awakening it deserves by presenting the country and its daydreaming politicians with the invoice for their mismanagement.

It’s improbable that Ms Truss will ever recover from its current debacle; the only question is whether the humiliation the UK has just experienced at the hands of global financial markets will bring to an end the age of untruthful politics that has so devalued the country’s administration.

But it won’t be easy to get out of this rut. King Charles III best summed up the national mood when he recently welcomed Prime Minister Truss to an audience with “dear, oh dear!

  https://omny.fm/shows/in-your-opinion/is-the-nominated-member-of-parliament-scheme-losin

 Source link

 

Related posts:

 

Liz Truss takes over a Britain in decline and in severe crisis: Martin Jacques

 

 

UK PM candidate's reported 'China threat' label plan 'an irresponsible vote-puller', no good for solving its own problems: analysts...

 

  Students at Zhejiang Guangsha Vocational and Technical University of Construction celebrate the upcoming 20th National Congress of the C...
 
Strong leadership core to provide ‘certainty, cohesion and strength’ in new journey   A huge artificial flower basket decorates Tian'anm...

How Britain fell from grace

 

British Prime Minister Liz Truss enjoyed only seven days of full power before global economic forces effectively destroyed her government. PHOTO: REUTERS

 

 

Whatever you may think of them, the British used to enjoy the reputation of a solid, well-run and responsible nation.

A centuries-old history of peaceful political change, with none of the coups, revolutions or civil wars that seem to have afflicted most other countries worldwide. A robust parliamentary system of government in which just two political parties take their turns in holding power based on electoral procedures that produce clear-cut results and solid governments with none of the unpredictable and often unstable coalition-making that afflicts most of the rest of Europe.

To be sure, the country’s politicians have always been of variable quality. But the United Kingdom’s civil service was highly rated for its professionalism and integrity, and so was its legal system, still considered an advantage and often touted as a national asset by many countries around the world.

That’s why Britain’s sudden descent into crisis looks so surprising. In just a few weeks, the credibility of some of the most critical institutions in British national life, including the prime minister, the Treasury, the Bank of England, the ruling Conservative Party, and the nation’s asset management industry, were all torn to shreds.

The country’s currency has sunk to its lowest levels in half a century, and the risk premium international investors demand to lend money to Britain is among the highest in the industrialised world.

For the first time in modern history, the British government was forced to bow to the pressure of global financial markets and withdraw a budget it had introduced only two weeks beforehand. And in another highly unusual move, the International Monetary Fund issued a rebuke to Britain using language otherwise reserved for those who manage the economies of poor and vulnerable developing nations.

Truss versus lettuce

Consequently, British Prime Minister Liz Truss, who assumed office only last month, had to ditch her policies before these were even tried, and the speculation in London is that her days are numbered.

The influential Economist newspaper had pointed out that, if one ignores the extended period of official mourning for Queen Elizabeth II – a period during which all politics were suspended – Ms Truss enjoyed only seven days of full power before the forces of the global economy effectively destroyed her government. That, The Economist suggested, is more or less the supermarket “shelf-life of the lettuce”.

Liz Truss may never recover from this cruel jibe: a British tabloid newspaper is currently offering its readers a live video stream of a lettuce head and a photograph of the Prime Minister, accompanied by the question, “which wet lettuce will last longer?”

Britain as a whole is now the butt of international jokes. Politicians in Italy – a country that will soon get its 70th government in almost as many years – have suggested that one of their retired prime ministers may be sent to London to try his hand at managing the British because he can’t do any worse than Britain’s politicians.

Mr Kyriakos Mitsotakis, the Prime Minister of Greece, a country that a decade ago had to be bailed out from national bankruptcy by global financial institutions, told Ms Truss’ government tongue-in-cheek that if they “need experience in dealing with the International Monetary Fund, we’re here to help”.

While the attention is on the UK experience, other economies and major currencies are also currently experiencing global pressure. The British pound may be down around 18 per cent to 20 per cent, but the euro is about 15 per cent weaker, and the Chinese renminbi dropped by an average of 11 per cent against the US dollar. The Bank of Japan recently spent an estimated US$21 billion (S$30 billion) trying to prop up the yen, to no avail.

However, credibility is everything in politics, finance and economics, and the UK government finally managed to lose all of these. Britain’s previously admired institutional framework and its hard-won reputation of certainty in financial policy went down the pan over the past two weeks.

And financial volatility is accompanied by political volatility. Between 1990 and 2010 – two decades – Britain was ruled by only three prime ministers. But from 2010 to now - just over one decade - the country has already known four additional prime ministers and may yet be ready for a fifth. Furthermore, no less than four politicians have served as finance ministers since January this year. These are chaotic politics Italian-style, minus the sun-drenched beaches or the delicious pasta.

More On This Topic 

‘Cakeism’ and Brexit

How did Britain get to this sorry state? A mixture of immediate failures by the Truss administration, magnified by a much more entrenched malaise.

Ms Truss won power by resorting to the oldest trick in politics: a promise that voters can have their cake and eat it. She vowed to cut taxes and increase spending, all based on borrowing from financial markets. And she dismissed the arguments of armies of economists who pointed out that hers was not an economic policy but a fantasy.

The more she faced criticism, the more she doubled down on her promises; her pledge to cut taxes became a test of wills, which she was determined to win. So, her ill-fated budget slashed taxes much further than anyone expected and sidelined Britain’s financial regulator and the country’s civil servants.

Ms Truss quickly discovered that one should not attempt to offer a spending bonanza against the backdrop of sharply rising inflation and interest rates, a punishing global energy crisis, as well as a British current account deficit which ballooned to an unprecedented 8 per cent of gross domestic product, and all without providing any indication of how Britain intends to deal with its public finances. The Prime Minister not only ran into a flat rejection by the financial markets, she unleashed a financial rout that could only be addressed by withdrawing her entire budget.

The problem of Ms Truss was not necessarily just the financial figures she peddled but the fact that her ill-conceived budget became totemic for a more comprehensive loss of British political and economic credibility, which has been cumulative over several years. 

 

The chief culprit is Brexit, as the British withdrawal from the European Union is popularly known. The damage that Brexit inflicted on the British economy - in terms of lower growth rates, lower exports and slashed inward investment – is by now well-documented.

But a much more severe impact on British credibility has been the conduct of the country’s political elite during this divorce process from the rest of Europe. The campaign to withdraw from the EU was conducted with lies; those who supported Brexit produced made-up figures about how Britain’s trade with the rest of the world would, supposedly, more than compensate for the loss of duty-free access to European markets.

And anyone who dared contradict the Brexiters by providing actual economic facts and figures was dismissed as part of so-called “project fear”, an alleged plot by the “establishment” to keep Britain shackled to Europe.

The tactic worked not only in pulling Britain out of the EU; it also spawned an entirely new class of British politicians who believe that all they need to do is to ram their policies through regardless of what the economic realities may be and if the facts don’t accord with their views, present “alternative facts”.

During the campaign that propelled her to power, Ms Truss refused to engage in any serious discussion with the critics of her economic policy, just as Mr Boris Johnson, her predecessor as prime minister, declined to explain how Britain would thrive outside the EU. Both politicians operated on the assumption that make-believe economics can become real economics.

And the reason people like them can come to power is to be found in another negative development of British politics.

More On This Topic

Who chooses the party leader?

For many decades, the Conservatives and Labour – the country’s two major historic parties – were mass movements, counting millions of members. But the election of the party leaders who could then become prime ministers was left in the hands of the few, usually just the MPs in either party.

Over the past 15 years, however, mass party membership disappeared: Britain’s Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, for instance, has far more paid-up members than all the political parties combined.

Yet, curiously, the choice of who gets elected as party leader was taken from MPs and given to the parties’ entire membership. The result is that an unrepresentative group of party members – in the case of the ruling Conservatives, only around 160,000 people out of a total population of 68 million – decides who would rule Britain.

If it were left to the MPs alone, Ms Truss would have got nowhere near the Downing Street residence of British prime ministers. But she won on a platform of economic fantasies sold to people who wanted to believe in the enduring myth of having something for nothing.

Ultimately, it was left to the global financial markets to confront Britain with the rude awakening it deserves by presenting the country and its daydreaming politicians with the invoice for their mismanagement.

It’s improbable that Ms Truss will ever recover from its current debacle; the only question is whether the humiliation the UK has just experienced at the hands of global financial markets will bring to an end the age of untruthful politics that has so devalued the country’s administration.

But it won’t be easy to get out of this rut. King Charles III best summed up the national mood when he recently welcomed Prime Minister Truss to an audience with “dear, oh dear!

  https://omny.fm/shows/in-your-opinion/is-the-nominated-member-of-parliament-scheme-losin

 Source link

 

Related posts:

 

Liz Truss takes over a Britain in decline and in severe crisis: Martin Jacques

 

 

UK PM candidate's reported 'China threat' label plan 'an irresponsible vote-puller', no good for solving its own problems: analysts...

 

  Students at Zhejiang Guangsha Vocational and Technical University of Construction celebrate the upcoming 20th National Congress of the C...
 
Strong leadership core to provide ‘certainty, cohesion and strength’ in new journey   A huge artificial flower basket decorates Tian'anm...

Wednesday 7 September 2022

Liz Truss takes over a Britain in decline and in severe crisis: Martin Jacques

 

Liz Truss delivers a speech at an event to announce the winner of the Conservative Party leadership contest in central London on September 5,2022. Photo: AFP



Liz Truss is the new British Prime Minister. She beat her Conservative rival Rishi Sunak by tacking strongly to the right. No doubt the fact that she is white, and Sunak is brown, was also a major factor for the 170,000 overwhelmingly white Conservative Party members who voted. If Truss is to be taken at her word, she will be the most right-wing prime minister since Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s.

Each of the last four Conservative prime ministers has been more right-wing than their predecessor: in chronological order, David Cameron, Theresa May, Boris Johnson, and Liz Truss. Truss wants to cut taxes, doesn't like the state, is hostile to redistribution, believes in trickle-down economics (that feathering the nests of the rich will ultimately help the poor), and is an anti-China hawk.

In being true to her beliefs, however, she faces a gargantuan problem. She is confronted with the worst economic crisis of any British prime minister since 1945. It is impossible to find any good news on the economic front. As a result of the war in Ukraine, the price of natural gas, which is the main source of domestic heating, is five times what it was a year ago and is predicted to carry on rising steeply. Without state intervention to hold down energy prices, around half the population will this winter be impoverished.

Inflation, which for most of this century has been at around 2 percent, is already at 11 percent, and is predicted to rise to 20 percent. Interest rates, which have similarly been very low, are rising rapidly, meaning much higher mortgage payments for homeowners. The Bank of England forecasts that the country will go into recession towards the end of this year, and some believe that it will continue until 2024.

With inflation now in double figures, workers are finding they are facing wage increases that are less than half the increase in prices: as a result, they are confronted with the prospect of sharply declining real wages over the next several years. There is growing industrial unrest which is likely to become increasingly widespread over the next year.

This is not just a short-term problem. Real wages are now just below the level they were in 2007, on the eve of the Western financial crisis. In other words, the British economy has been stagnating for the last 15 years and in the process has been falling behind its near neighbours Germany and France. One major think-tank is predicting that over the next two years Britain will experience the largest fall in average real incomes for over one hundred years.

It is inconceivable that Truss can tackle this nightmare scenario by cutting taxes, rolling back the state, and turning a blind eye to the poorest sections of the community. This will require state intervention and redistribution on the scale of the COVID-19 crisis in 2020, otherwise the Conservative Party will surely lose the next general election in 2024. Truss faces a major dilemma: take the right-wing ideological route and court electoral disaster or follow a pragmatic road and swallow her ideological principles.

Even before the coming economic tsunami, there was a mood of frustration and dislocation, a feeling that the country no longer worked properly. Far from ushering in a new era of prosperity and efficiency, Brexit has become synonymous with labour shortages in many parts of the economy. This has been accentuated by the impact of COVID-19 which continues to disrupt the economy, most obviously in the form of chronic labour shortages in many sectors. Britain's most-loved institution, the National Health Service, is now on life-support, a result of being starved of money for many years and an increasingly chronic shortage of staff.

It is important to emphasise that Britain is now in a much inferior position than it was in 1979 when Thatcher first came to power. This is a weakness it shares more generally with the West and especially Western Europe. The Soviet bloc aside, the West for the most part dominated the world during the 1980s. Its influence and hinterland, however, are now much reduced because of the rise of China together with that of the developing world. A topical example will suffice to illustrate the point. Is the present spike in oil and gas prices, which are costing Western Europe dearly, a permanent or temporary phenomenon? It looks very likely that it will be the former, that Western Europe will be permanently disadvantaged, because Russia has found new markets, notably India and China, for its oil. Western Europe enjoys less economic power in the world and its room for manoeuvre has contracted. This is what being part of the declining part of the world means.

Finally, what will Truss mean for Britain's relations with China? There is no reason for optimism. Truss thinks of herself as a cold war warrior. She has strongly hinted that China will be designated a "threat" to national security and treated in the same way as Russia. The golden age in the relationship between Britain and China came to an end around five years ago and there is precious little chance of it returning for a long time to come. 

By Martin Jacques


Born1945 (age 73–74)
Coventry, England, Great Britain, U.K
NationalityBritish
EducationKing Henry VIII School, Coventry
Alma materUniversity of Manchester (B.A.)
University of Cambridge (PhD)
OccupationEditor, academic, author
WebsiteMartinJacques.com
By Martin Jacques@martjacques

The author was until recently a senior fellow at the Department of Politics and International Studies at Cambridge University. He is a visiting professor at the Institute of Modern International Relations at Tsinghua University and a senior fellow at the China Institute, Fudan University. Follow him on twitter @martjacques. opinion@globaltimes.com.cn 

Source link

 

While sowing discord around China, the US is heading to be a 'failing state' OTHER


China state-affiliated media 
#Taiwan island is a province of #China. What does the #US mean by “defense” ? : China will firmly strike back against acts undermining China's sovereignty and security: Chinese FM commented after US claimed the arms sale to Taiwan was for defensive purposes.

Image

Monday 10 February 2020

Death of western democracies?

I told you so’: Trump showing off a copy of USA Today’s front page featuring his acquittal in the Senate impeachment trial, as he arrived to address the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington. — Reuters


https://youtu.be/SlB0tX2hiCs

https://youtu.be/81eWnIOLyAc

https://youtu.be/BSgc7wuiN30

https://youtu.be/nuvhjzbOyy0

ANGOLA, Haiti and Cambodia are “Banana Republics”: countries where the rule of law has been traduced by a man or woman or group seeking their own aggrandisement.

There is a new addition to this list: the United States of America. As one of the oldest and proudest of the world’s democracies, this country’s appalling downgrade is testament to one man’s work.

His name is Donald Trump and he is the 45th President. TV reality show star, charlatan and bigot, Trump has tweeted his nation’s principles – as articulated by the Declaration of Independence, Constitution and Bill of Rights – into a pulp.

Of course, he had help. He has been ably assisted by a coterie of men and women known as “Republicans”. In the years to come, as historians pore over the catastrophe that is the Trump Presidency, tracking its dismal, neo-fascist trajectory, one of the most important dates will be his acquittal by the US Senate from impeachment charges of abuse of power and obstructing Congress on Feb 5,2020.

The Americans have demonstrated that the highest office in their land and the most powerful in the world – the Presidency – can be manipulated for personal gain, that their political elite will actively enable this.

Across the Atlantic, a buffoonish Old-Etonian turned hack journalist turned politician Boris Johnson has parlayed Brexit to not only propel himself to 10 Downing Street but also persuade the UK’s working-classes to vote against their own interests.

Membership in the European Union was more than just about common markets and free movement. It was limiting, but that’s precisely the point: all its members accepted the EU’s strictures to create confidence and hence, the conditions for peace as well as development in their continent.

All of that has gone out of the window now.

If the Yanks who want to “Make America Great Again” are living in a Banana Republic – their British cousins who want to “regain control” via Brexit exist in a posh-boy rerun of Downtown Abbey crossed with 1917 and the Raj Quartet.

What happened? How have centuries-old democracies become so fragile and even self-destructive?

First: inequality has gotten out of hand. The neoliberal, trickle-down economic policies launched by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher in the late 1970/80’s fuelled a massive shift in prosperity from workers and the middle-classes to owners and shareholders. Real wages stagnated and tax policies benefited the recipients of dividends not generated by their own labour.

Subsequently, more centrist leaders (such as Bill Clinton, Tony Blair and Barrack Obama) maintained much of the same policies. And the numbers don’t lie.

When Thatcher came to power in 1979, the UK manufacturing industry employed 6.8 million people – by 2016 this had fallen to 2.6 million.

In 2017, three of the US’ richest individuals collectively held more wealth than the bottom 50% of their country’s population –160 million people. Gini coefficients (a measure of inequality) are shooting up on both sides of the Atlantic.

Moreover, the advent of social media allowed fake and demagogic information to be spread quickly as well as unchecked, shifting the national discourse and mood almost at will.

Meanwhile, ethnic and religious minorities as well as women – rightfully – sought greater representation in the public life and culture of the West.

However, the failure of the Anglo-American elite to address the above-mentioned inequalities led the white-majority working classes to feel that their leaders were more interested in playing identity politics than protecting them.

At the same time, a refugee crisis emanating from the Middle East and North Africa (in the US, the refugee crisis is predominantly Latino) heightened white anxieties over being displaced in their own countries.

This gave the opportunity for Trump and other demagogues to rise. Economic inequities and cultural insecurities fuelled white nativist impulses.

It’s not clear if the progressives can blunt this wave (Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn failed dismally) and the chaos in Iowa Democratic Party caucuses only underlines the gloom.

We, in Southeast Asia must learn from the fragility of these Northern Atlantic democracies.

Their mistakes aside – democracy is still the best way forward – especially for multi-racial and multi-religious countries.

What’s key is to avoid the pitfalls the West fell for. We must address the growing inequality of our societies. Growth alone will not bring stability and peace.

A 2018 World Bank report found that Indonesia’s Gini Index worsened from 30.0 in the 1990s to 38.1 in 2017. Singapore (45.8 in 2016), Malaysia (45.5 in 2008) and the Philippines (44.4 in 2015) all had Gini Indexes above 40: signs of higher income inequality.

Leaders ignore warning signs like this at their peril. We must invest in our people: their safety, health, education and skills.

Next, social media must be brought to heel. Hate speech and deliberately provocative postings must be curbed without resorting to undue repression.

The obvious racial and religious fissures in our societies must be managed very carefully. Common ground needs to be found – or created – between our majority and minority communities.

And we must remain engaged: both informed about the issues and vigilant against cynical manipulators of our insecurities.

It may seem like a daunting task when our former colonial masters and role models have failed so miserably. There is no choice. We cannot join the Americans and the British in rubbish dump of history

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Related posts:

'We lied, we cheated, we stole', ‘the Glory of American experiment’ by US Secretary of State/Ex-CIA director Mike Pompeo

Saturday 25 June 2016

Britain steps backward as EU faces decline: chaos but no negative impact, a windfall for children studying in UK



Britain steps backward as EU faces decline


The UK voted to leave the EU, with the Leave supporters beating Remain by 51.9 percent to 48.1 percent. The slight victory is likely to have opened a Pandora's box in Europe, pushing the continent into chaos.

A lose-lose situation is already emerging. The British pound fell 10 percent at one stage on Friday. The euro fell 3 percent.

David Cameron announced he would quit as British prime minister. Scotland may start a new independence referendum.

There are also calls in the Netherlands and France for a similar exit referendum.

The UK is just over 300 years old. In its heyday it was known as an empire on which the sun never set, with colonies all over the world (Britain was the former imperial power - whose military forces repeatedly invaded China in the 19th century - and the rising Asian giant, now the world's second-largest economy)

Now it is stepping back to where it was.

Britons are already showing a losing mind-set. They may become citizens of a nation that prefers to shut itself from the outside world.

The Leave advocates had been calculating whether their pensions were guaranteed or migrants were encroaching on their neighborhood. Bigger topics such as the country's aspirations or its global strategy were overlooked.

Britain has been a special member of the EU. It has not joined the eurozone, nor adopted the Schengen agreement. France and Germany have been resentful of Britain's half-hearted presence in the EU. In a sense, Britain's exit may be a relief for both sides.

However, such relief is in effect a major setback for European integration. Such setbacks don't happen in good times. Britain's exit reflects the general decline of Europe.

The world's center used to lie on the two sides of the Atlantic. Now the focus has shifted to the Pacific. East Asia has witnessed decades of high-speed growth and prosperity. Europe stays where it was, becoming the world's center of museums and tourist destinations. Unfortunately, Europe is also close to the chaotic Middle East. Waves of refugees flood into Europe, coinciding with increasing terrorist attacks.

Europe is not able to resolve the problems it is facing. The public are confused and disappointed and extremism is steading.

The Leave grouping beat out the Remain supporters by only 4 percentage points, which could have resulted from some temporary reasons. Is it really fair to decide Britain's future this way?

Such changes will benefit the US, which will lose a strong rival in terms of the dominance of its currency. Politically it will be easier for the US to influence Europe.

There is no direct political impact on Russia and China. For the Chinese people, who are at a critical time to learn about globalization and democracy, they will continue to watch the consequence of Britain's embracing of a "democratic" referendum. - Global Times.

No negative impact from UK vote for Malaysia



Britain is still a hugely important economy in Europe, says Liew

KUALA LUMPUR : Malaysian property firms with developments in the United Kingdom say that their ventures will not be negatively impacted as a result of the June 23 referendum whereby British citizens voted to exit the European Union.

Eco World International Bhd executive vice-chairman Tan Sri Liew Kee Sin said that while the decisive win by the Brexit camp was unexpected, the group is optimistic that the results hold a silver lining going forward.

“Now that the results of the EU referendum are known, the long uncertainty which has caused many investors to hold back on decision making is finally over. Britain is still a hugely important economy in Europe with highly principled, professional and competent leaders,” he said in a statement.

Liew added that he has every confidence that the British government will do their utmost to take proactive measures to assuage post-Brexit concerns and move the UK forward on every front.

London’s position as a prime destination for global real estate investment is unlikely to change given that many of the fundamental drivers of demand are still intact. Chief among them are transparency of laws, sesurity and ease of ownership, and shortage of supply, among others, Liew noted.

EWI, which is en route to listing on Bursa Malaysia, has three projects in London, namely the London City Island Phase 2 in East London, Embassy Gardens in Nine Elms, and Wardian London facing the Canary Wharf. All three were launched last year.

“For EWI specifically, it should be noted that through our proposed initial public offering we will be raising equity in ringgit. Now that the sterling has dropped it means that the cost we have to inject into the UK to pay for the developments there will be lower,” he points out.

Meanwhile, in a statement reacting to the results of the UK referendum, Sime Darby Bhd, which is undertaking the Battersea Power Station project has reiterated its long term commitment to the venture.

“The results of the referendum is not expected to impact the viability of the project.

“We are confident the iconic development will continue to generate interest in the longer term and that London will continue to remain a key investment destination and financial centre,” it said.

Sime Darby has a 40% stake in Battersea. The other joint venture partners are SP Setia Bhd and the Employees Provident Fund with 40% and 20% respectively.

A research note by MIDF Research said global capital markets may take some time to adjust to the Brexit vote which could have adverse repercussions on businesses.

Its group managing director Datuk Mohd Najib Abdullah said that as a result of Brexit, the world is moving into a period of elevated uncertainty, with risk appetite plunging in a flight to safety and security.

As the UK is an important market for Malaysian exporters and an important source of foreign direct investments, any economic malaise from Europe will inevitably affect Malaysia in the longer term, Aboth directly and indirectly, MIDF said. - By afiq Isa The Star

Windfall for Malaysian parents of children studying in Britain 


Parents with children studying in Britain are heaving a sigh of relief because the pound has weakened following Brexit.

The ringgit closed at RM5.66 to the pound yesterday, a drop of 4.67% compared to a month ago when it was RM6.03.

Parent Action Group for Education Malaysia chairman Datin Noor Azimah Abdul Rahman said tuition fees would be more affordable.

“For parents who couldn’t afford it initially, they may change their minds now,” she said when contacted.

She added that one should look at the positive instead of focusing on the negative implications.

A parent, who asked to be identified only as Auntie Chris, has a son studying biotechnology at Imperial College London, and said: “We are liquidating our accounts to take advantage of the drop in the pound, which is great news.”

She said her son, who is in his second year, planned to pursue his master’s in Britain after graduation but had put his plan on hold due to the strong pound.

“We asked him to work first, after graduating, due to the financial constraints but with the pound dropping significantly, going for his master’s may be back on the table,” she said.

Another parent, Azura Abdullah, said she did not expect her son’s tuition fees to increase any time soon.

Her son is a second-year law student at University of Exeter.

Some parents were fearful of Britain’s exit from the European Union.

Despite the weakened pound, Azura felt the price of goods may increase in the short term because Britain could no longer leverage on EU trade deals, which could increase the cost of living there for her son.

“But we hope to offset this with the lower currency rate as the pound will devalue in the short to middle term,” Azura added.

Auntie Chris said she was worried that Britain’s decision may affect job prospects for Malaysians over there.

“If Britain goes into recession, it will affect job prospects for new graduates,” she said, adding that immigration controls may also be tightened following Brexit.

Chief executive officer and provost of the University of Nottingham Malaysia campus Prof Christine Ennew said parents should expect cheaper education.

“Students should be able to do more with their money in the UK, at least in the short term, say over the next couple of years,” she said.

Prof Ennew admitted that there could be some concerns over the issuing of student visas.

“However, Boris Johnson, one of the leading figures in the Brexit camp, has always been very supportive of international students and this should give some reassurance that the visa regime will not necessarily become harder for students from outside the EU,” she said.

She added that it was likely that EU students would be more affected than those from outside the union. - The Star

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2016年5月13日 ... Chinese-language editorial (see below) published earlier today, the Global Times said that "barbarians" in the British media had blown the ...



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