COMMENTARY: Keeping OTs in the loop after Brexit

By Dickson Igwe, Contributor

Brexit is a huge economic, social, and political matter, that the Overseas Territories of Great Britain must engage with.

At root, Owen Jones the Guardian columnist has described Brexit as, “driven by conservative media outlets and the right wing who have demonized migrants and blamed migrants for stagnating wages, and the UK housing crisis, which in fact is caused by austerity and the UK Tory government”.

The aftermath of the 2016 Brexit referendum has seen a spiraling of race hate in the UK. Brexit itself was never a racist movement. Brexit has simply attracted the worst elements in British society; very much like Donald Trump’s ‘America First’ has in the USA. And make no mistake, Brexit is tearing the UK apart politically, economically, and socially.

Civil war

Brexit is a civil war that may well continue for decades. Why: half the UK population feels strongly that the UK must leave the European Union. The other half holds a polar opposite view; that Britain is better off inside the EU.

Brexit has plunged the UK into political paralysis. There is a question mark over the sustainability of a post-Brexit UK. The Caribbean Overseas Territories must keep close watch on how Brexit evolves. Why: because as Overseas Territories, what takes place in London and Brussels has consequences for the OTs.

It is impossible to assess how Brexit will impact the Overseas Territories. And presently, it is impossible to predict the outcome of the Brexit process.

The delay

As of March 15, 2019 Brexit is headed for delay, after the UK was scheduled to exit the European Union on March 29, 2019. Brexit has become a nightmare for the British Establishment.

There is a threat that Brexit may break up the UK, with Scotland and Wales voting to leave the UK, and become part of the European Union. The EU is a loose confederation.

Brexit could see a resurgence of Irish Republicanism as a hard border is re-established between Northern Ireland and Ireland Proper. Ireland is an enthusiastic member of the EU.

Sovereign nation states a diminishing phenomenon

Now, the world is today made up of rapidly integrating regions driven by three economic power blocs. The idea of sovereign nation states is a diminishing one.

Countries are coming together in economic and political blocs: super regions. This is a direct result of globalization: the shrinking of the world through digital technology and trade. The first bloc is the Americas led by the United States.

And despite Trump and his ‘Pitchfork revolution’ and a fear by Trump’s base of being overwhelmed by ‘brown people’, the USA, Canada, and Mexico, will ultimately drive the rest of the economies in the region, as China becomes the key adversary of the USA.

Trump has failed to destroy the global order, despite his aggressive protectionist rhetoric. The second bloc is the European Union. The EU is a market of over 500 million middle-income consumers.

EU a massive market

It possesses a huge market that is at the centre of the European Confederation. The world’s most affluent and socially developed countries sit in the north of Europe.

The third bloc is a much more ambiguous economic region. It is less cohesive and less defined. It is Asia. If Asia is termed an economic bloc with China at the center, then it is the largest economic region and the fastest growing. China, South Korea, Japan, Singapore, Malaysia, Australia, and New Zealand sit in the South Pacific.

Then Russia and India tend to lean towards the Pacific in terms of their economic growth. The rest of the world: Latin America, the Caribbean, and Africa, link their economies with these massive economic blocs in various ways that reflect their own strategic and economic interests.

Britain – with its Overseas Territories who are ruled by Westminster — sits at the heart of the European Union. However in 2016, Britain, in a referendum, voted to leave the Union. Britain voted to leave a bloc of 28 states that form a single market.

At the heart of the drama

The preceding calculus is at the heart of the Brexit drama. The Brexiteers who drove the 2016 referendum, and the anti-European culture in the UK for decades before 2016, simply failed to understand how the world had changed.

Consequently, as the date approached to exit the European Union, Britain hit a wall called reality. To simply cut the cord and leave meant chaos: termed a Hard Brexit.

Britain is joined to the European Union at the hip. British commerce is organically part of European commerce. It is nearly impossible to disengage with the EU commercially without major, negative, economic and social impacts.

Jobs will be a causality of Brexit

Jobs will be lost. UK living standards will drop. There will be logistical and security nightmares. The UK will be plunged into a recession that could even become depression.

UK airlines will go into receivership as airports in the EU stop flights from the UK preferring European Union carriers. Seventy percent of UK groceries are imported from Europe.

A new tariff regime will see food prices in the UK skyrocket. Hard borders will become a reality. Britons will require new entry protocols to visit Europe. Investors, who control the global economy, have taken fright. And even UK investors and businesses that supported Brexit have fled the country in a grotesque hypocrisy.

Exodus of the wealthy

A number of the UK’s wealthiest men recently packed their bags and left for jurisdictions such as Singapore and Monaco. Numerous British companies are voting on Brexit by moving their head offices to European cities: Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Paris, Berlin, and Brussels.

Even the UK’s most critical economy, the City of London and the financial and investment services London offers, is seeing capital flight to mainland Europe, and a threat to thousands of lucrative jobs in the City of London.

To be continued

Connect with Dickson Igwe on Twitter and Facebook