Comments by "gerhard7" (@gerhard7323) on "Why the Tories have failed, with William Clouston | The Brendan O'Neill Show" video.

The service oriented UK was, by design, during its EU membership one of the bloc's biggest export markets after the US and China. Our negative balance of trade, particularly in goods, with the EU became a feature thanks to the single market's specific orientation toward manufacturing. An area which member states like France and Germany excel in. The trade balance size was huge and we were, as William points out, slowly but surely impoverishing ourselves in the process. This rendered us less able to resist being swallowed up by the European Project the longer this situation continued.
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The supposed benefits of trade deals are massively misunderstood and overrated.
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From what I've long understood Labour's Healey having to go cap in hand to the IMF in the 1970s was indeed a stitch up confected by the UK establishment.
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Yep...and a whelk stall that's fast running out of whelks an' all.
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Can you expand on that?
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@ChefEarthenware Point taken, but I suspect that - and I admittedly do have an axe to grind here as an SDP member - WC was inadvertently and incorrectly conflating monetarism with neoliberalism.
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@ChefEarthenware You can. Moreso than we're used to anyway, and they advocate for mixed market economics with more nationalised major infrastructure. As they're fond of saying, 'more left on economics and more right culturally'.
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Easier said than done but Australians need to remain watchful of the short termism that has come to characterise UK politics for the last four decades. That their political classes don't basically 'do a Thatcher' and successfully hive off one group at the expense of another with the promise of enjoying more than their fair share of that finite wealth stream 'today'. It's not difficult for a here today gone tomorrow government to tempt some - and they only need 'just' enough remember - and create the temporary illusion of wealth, but the consequences for doing so for the country and its future are potentially terminal.
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Truss and Kwarteng's deeply cynical 'mini-budget' was pure red meat for the Tory faithful at the worst possible time. It was reckless, stupid, economically illiterate and will cost the country, nevermind mortgage payers, for years to come.
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Nevermind its diminutive size compared to the UK Singapore, thanks to its geolocation and not just its established westernised culture, has essentially become the gateway to the entire Far East for Western multinationals. It's the 'not too Western, not too Eastern' stepping stone where they can easily send their highly paid, pampered execs without too much pushback or too many issues. Difficult to imagine really why anyone could compare the two let alone one emulate the other.
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