Lessons from history
I have been reading about the Suez Crisis, hoping to find some parallels between that totally self inflicted disaster and Brexit.
Suez started with a few zealots who were convinced that the UK was still a world power, Nasser was a threat to world peace and that any policy, including lying to Parliament and conspiring to start a war was worth it to stop him.
Brexit is similar except that it is not Nasser but the EU and now trade wars are worth it. The other differences include the fact that a trade war does far more harm to the UK than to the EU, shreds the UK’s international reputation and is far less likely than Suez to rally the country around the flag.
Still the brexiteers are happy enough to try it but they seem to have forgotten the elephant in the room. In 1956 it took only the threat from President Eisenhower, that the Federal Reserve should sell its UK bonds to bring the British government to its senses and its knees.
Eisenhower warned against Suez, told the UK he knew what it were doing and then stopped the invasion literally in its tracks, with just one twitch of the USA’s economic arsenal.
How so very unlike the current US President.
Economics, trade and Brexit, not necessarily in that order but the dog always comes first.