Insight - The Inherited Black Hole!

I think we will be hearing Labour government people from now until the Autumn Budget on October 30th the continuous refrain about the ‘black hole’ they inherited. Indeed, it may still go higher than the £22 billion they are currently talking about.

The problem is two-fold: first Labour, if they claim to be professional and educated politicos, should have known that there was an emerging black hole under Johnson, made catastrophically worse by Truss. After all that is what Labour left to the Conservatives in 2010. Remember Liam Byrne’s note ‘I’m afraid there is no money’. So, it should have been no surprise to Labour in 2024

Secondly, it is plain to see that Keir Starmer’s trip to Berlin and Paris failed to acknowledge the essential biggest black hole in our economy, which is according to the Centre for Economic Reform a staggering £40 billion, caused by Brexit.

Starmer simply demonstrated on his trip a crass ignorance of how the EU works: there is no chance that he could set up with either Germany or France a separate trade deal. Any such deal has to be done in Brussels, not Paris or Berlin.

And unlike Covid or the war in Ukraine, the country voted for Brexit.

Stephen Hardy MBE. Chair Bexhill & Battle Liberal Democrats