Theresa May is set to be our next Prime Minister, and after Brexit there is a real opportunity for a new agenda, one our new leader hasn’t wasted any time in showing she is intend on missing completely. Already talk is not of embracing deregulation, empowering the private sector and promoting real, sustainable growth. Instead we hear of nonsensical taglines like ‘responsible capitalism’, employee representatives on company boards, restrictions on executive pay, stopping employee exploitation and other unintelligent soundbites, echoing not Margaret Thatcher but Ed Miliband and Vince Cable. So much for the historic opportunity Brexit presents. Mrs. May is likely to be more interventionist than even David Cameron.
The calls from the opposition is already for a snap general election. Labour is busy trying to remove Jeremy Corbyn in time, so a centrist leader can emerge to fight with Mrs. May for the right to implement policies which will be difficult to distinguish. At least Corbyn provides an alternative, though hopeless, vision. And that makes him unelectable. That’s why there will be no break with the failed welfare/ warfare state. No bonfire of regulation. No change in tax rates. No new vision of delivery of public services. No restriction on central bank hegemony. No overhaul of the benefits system. No rethink of HS2. No change in the interventionist foreign policy doctrine. The only change we can expect is an attempt at a clampdown on immigration.
Mrs. May states that ‘Brexit means Brexit’. But that’s pretty much all it means. The new, post-Brexit Britain will be the exact same as the old. No change in course. No new vision. The slow motion journey towards financial collapse continues. Opportunity wasted. What a surprise.