Thought 2016 was turbulent? Trust me, the revolution is just beginning: The true cost of Brexit, a backlash in France and a new cold war – 2017 is set to be far bumpier, writes ROBERT PESTON
By ROBERT PESTON
DailyMail.com
1 January 2017
It was the Great Rejection – 2016 was when people in Britain and America chucked out the traditional way of running their respective countries. This year we’ll learn whether we have started a global revolt and whether we have made ourselves richer, poorer, safer or more vulnerable.
Fog will hang over the new political and economic landscape for a while yet. But we should be in no doubt that there has been an earthquake and we are living through changes to our lives and livelihoods more important even than the momentous transfer of economic power from the state to the private sector by Thatcher and Reagan in the 1980s, and the consequent collapse of communism.
Now in some ways the timing of the revolt against the Establishment was odd, because those on lower incomes in Britain and America – angry that their earnings had gone nowhere for years – voted to throw the old guard out the window just when their living standards were beginning to improve. But there was a prevailing sense that the way we’ve been running the global economy for 30 years will only ever enrich a plutocracy and no one else, and enough was enough.
What Trump, Farage and Boris Johnson did so brilliantly was to feel and express the pain of the dispossessed many. People like me may have hated their wilful disregard of facts and their illiberal tropes (yes, you Boris). But the only truth that matters now is that they won.
Which is why our own new Prime Minister Theresa May has set as her priorities reining in the excesses of the private sector, controlling immigration and frantically trying to reform the economy so that we produce more for less and wages could rise year after year.
It will be at least ten years before we know whether that vote to leave the EU will make us richer or poorer. My view is our earnings will be less than they would otherwise have been over that time, as we will struggle to grow fast enough in new markets to replace trade we will lose with the EU.
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