Was Brexit a mistake? Of course it was!
● One of the main points for brexiteers was that the UK could control its borders. Yet, immigration to the UK, since Brexit, has sharply increased.
● Since leaving the EU, there are a lot of industries critically under-staffed (hospitality, food production, health and social care, delivery companies, just to name a few).
● The famous 350 million pounds that the UK would have saved from its EU membership were promised to the NHS, but they never appeared.
● Truck drivers are waiting for hours on end at the ports in Kent, blocking the supply chains for both import and export.
● There is so much bureaucracy that it is no longer valuable for European countries to do business with the UK. The Brexiteeres claimed they would have replaced these by trading with Australia and New Zealand, but at the moment these are costing more money than they’re worth.
● As a consequence of the war in Ukraine, energy prices have increased all over Europe, but not as much as in the UK.
Because of all this, the UK is the only G7 economy due to shrink this year.
Could there be a way for the UK to turn this around? The UK has been a leader in changes throughout history, can it turn it around again? Can this crisis stimulate a different type of economy? The place to start feels counter-intuitive, but it’s ‘Degrowth’.
Degrowth is a concept that is gaining momentum in the economy sector; especially in the context of post-capitalism. Degrowth is based on the principles of:
● Sustainability. It is imperative to support the ecosystem, if we want the ecosystem to support us.
● Circularity. ‘Waste not. Want not’
● Cooperation (as opposed to competition). As humans, it’s always easier to compete and it takes more effort to cooperate, but this can produce better results for everyone
● Useful production. This is an interesting topic, because a capitalistic economy produces for the sake of it, and the demand is constructed for the production sector. If we base the economy on useful production we only produce what is needed. So it starts with the demand.
● Sharing. ‘Sufficiency for all, excess for none’
● Local production
● Work-life balance
● Relationship. A life and an economy based on people and relationships, rather than possession