Brexit Britain is Bonkers

Farage

Nigel Farage, one of those who led us into Brexit, and made a fortune for his friends.

The UK is now as poorly governed as at any time in my life. Decisions are being made that are crazy.

Yesterday the government decided not to build the Swansea Bay tidal lagoon, citing its high cost. Meanwhile they are proposing to build a new nuclear power station at Wylfa in Anglesey, as well as the one currently under construction at Hinkley Point. These nuclear power stations are every bit as expensive as the scrapped lagoon project, and come with massively greater risks and less benefits. As this tidal lagoon would have been the first of its kind anywhere in the world costs will be high, but as many more are built the costs will fall. It is potentially a vast global market to which the UK has turned its back.

The UK government is still paying subsidies to outdated and polluting technologies, (oil and gas exploration, fracking, nuclear power) and are pushing ahead with a third runway for Heathrow. Meanwhile they seem to have done all they can to damage the new clean industries of the future. Solar installations in the UK halved for the second consecutive year, while soaring globally. Onshore wind has been effectively killed off. Locally owned and controlled renewable energy coops are growing in other countries, but in UK they too have been stopped in their tracks.

There are some brilliant things going on in Britain. Take just one example, the new hydrogen fuel cell ferry service destined for the Orkney Islands. I’ve blogged before about hydrogen fuel cell shipping. It will be a huge industry as renewably generated hydrogen replaces diesel in the World’s ships. Ferguson Marine have attracted this pioneering technology to Port Glasgow on the Clyde with help from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation fund, who have supplied three quarters of the current research funding. Leaving the EU will of course end, or at least damage, such innovative collaboration.

Dozens of business, from Japanese car manufacturers to Herefordshire fruit farmers are starting to relocate away from the UK. Brexit will be a disaster for many of those who voted for it. They were hoodwinked by a campaign of lies. As Bloomberg investigations show some hedge fund managers with close links to Nigel Farage made an absolute killing. Perhaps they are the only clear winners of the Brexit vote. Worse than the economic chaos that Brexit has caused is the breakdown of social cohesion. The damage Brexit has done will take generations to heal. The best that we can do now is to campaign to stay in the EU. Last Saturday’s demonstration in favour of a people’s vote on the deal was very well supported. (And please sign this petition.)

While this government make an endless series of dreadful decisions, and the Labour opposition fail to oppose, the real job of holding the government to account is falling to others. So let’s finish on a positive note. Three outstanding women come to mind. Caroline Lucas is the one MP speaking sense on every issue from Heathrow expansion to energy policy, human rights to Brexit. Carole Cadwalladr has just won the Orwell prize for her excellent investigative journalism on how Cambridge Analytica misused data to achieve the Brexit referendum result. Molly Scott Cato is a Green MEP who speaks a lot of sense, and her piece in today’s Guardian illuminates Farage and the hedge funds and the killing they made from the Brexit referendum. Three clear voices of courage and sanity in a country that seems to have gone bonkers.

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