Long road to Brexit
From forecasts to retrospective
When the conservatives had to replace Teresa May as prime minister with the ardent Eurosceptic Boris Boris Johnson, it seemed that Brexit would still take place. However, today there is again a lot of doubts about this, and it is by no means accidental that experts give more and more conflicting assessments every day.
Judging by the results of the referendum and polls, not all of Britain is behind Brexit, but Ulster and Scotland are definitely against
At the same time, many professional economists unequivocally put on a hard Brexit. The quintessence of such estimates can be considered the statement of the deputy director of the Institute of Trading and Investments Alexander Egorov.
“After Boris Johnson came to power and the rhetoric that now sounds from London, the option of a“ hard ”exit from the EU becomes more and more real. Market participants perceive this as a negative factor for the British economy, and the pound has come under pressure from these negative expectations. ”
The British, regardless of how they voted on the issue of leaving the EU, are clearly scared by the prospect of an increase in separatism within the country, caused by the problem of the Irish border. To leave Ulster’s border with Ireland open is to get a hole in the “anti-continental” blockade, for which the British seemingly voted in a referendum. Closing this line, one must always remember the decades of the bloody confrontation there.
The increasingly difficult situation with Brexit leaves the United Kingdom face to face with financial and economic problems that are aggravating there. And the probability of at least a financial and economic “split” of Northern Ireland, in view of the conditions imposed by Brussels on London’s exit from the EU, is only increasing.
On the agenda today is the growth of "pro-European" separatism in Scotland, which may turn out to be far more radical than even in Spanish Catalonia. All this happens against the backdrop of the enviable determination of the new British government to withdraw the country from the EU precisely on British conditions.
Now the work of the British Parliament has been suspended, and, as many believe, it is not entirely legal. Deputies are clearly preventing Boris Johnson from completing Brexit negotiations with the Europeans. And Queen Elizabeth II already managed to put a signature on the bill with a request to Brussels for a deferment. The reprieve, as you know, is not the first.
Johnson’s promise to resolve the issue until October 31 may remain a promise, since most members of the House of Commons voted to put forward a draft law on deferring UK withdrawal from the EU until January 31 on 2020.
The growing conflict of Brexit with the European Union is connected, among other things, with a retrospective of relations between London and the EU. Recall that the UK was among the main initiators of the creation of this block (in 1955-1957 gg.). Accordingly, the other countries that formed the EU were counting on the competitive British pound and the British economy as a whole, one of the largest in Europe.
But London soon chose to step back from the European Union, initiating the creation of the EFTA, the European Free Trade Association, at the beginning of the 1960, which, by the way, is still valid today. In addition to Britain, it also includes the countries of Scandinavia, Austria, Switzerland and miniature Andorra, Liechtenstein and San Marino.
Naturally, this dealt a strategic blow to the European Union, triggering an anti-British front in the EU, all the more so as London planned to associate the entire British Commonwealth with the EFTA. However, this project was disrupted through joint US and EU trade and other economic measures for all EFTA countries and many Commonwealth member countries.
Dictated by Washington
Is it any wonder that the syndrome of the anti-British front is still preserved in the European Union? For many years ago, and now many politicians of the EU countries and in its leadership believe that London is playing a Jesuit game against the European Union and the eurozone, playing in Washington in the same. There, from the beginning, they were not interested in enhancing the world economic and geopolitical role of the EU.
But for obvious reasons, the United States is just as uninterested in Britain's exit from the EU working to restore the leading global position of the British pound. Washington does not at all want to help London, albeit indirectly, in restoring the geopolitical position of Great Britain.
That is why the US CIA continues, for example, the tacit support for Irish nationalism in Ulster, Scottish separatism, and "pro-Spanish" sentiments in Gibraltar. In the United States, statements in support of the demands of the Cypriot decolonization groups of the four British regions of Cyprus - in the south and southeast of the island - sound quite regularly in various forms. And so on and so forth…
By the way, in the same dubious registry there is continued unofficial support by the Americans, first of all, of the Argentinean “ultras”, demanding the return of the British Malvinas (Falkland Islands) to Buenos Aires. Secondly - periodic, with Chile's long-standing claims to Pitcairn - these are the last British islands in the Pacific Ocean. Thirdly - the long-standing claims of Mexico and Guatemala to British Honduras - since 1981, independent Belize, a member of the "pro-British" Commonwealth of Nations. Despite the fact that Belize retained a large British military base.
The British Pitcairn Islands aren’t easy to find on the map.
This whole situation has long roots in the long-term US strategy to level the status of Great Britain as a great power. Even during the Cairo Conference of American President F. D. Roosevelt, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek and British Prime Minister W. Churchill on 22-26 on November 1943, a "separate" meeting of the Chinese and American delegations took place (November 25). Roosevelt confidentially told Chiang Kai-shek that Britain would soon lose its position in the world. Even despite the defeat of Germany and Japan.
The economic power of the United States, according to Roosevelt, also "will not leave room and the equal rights of the British currency." In this connection, China could accelerate the return of Hong Kong and prepare to strengthen its position in the British colonies in Southeast Asia.
It all started at Bretton Woods.
This is exactly what the United States took advantage of, since then it has begun to oust Britain from the world ranking table. The first bell rang during the notorious Bretton Woods Conference (1944), which actually proclaimed the US monopoly in the global financial and economic system. There, the American side on the threshold rejected the proposal of London to jointly regulate regional financial markets.
The factors of London’s confrontation with Europe and at the same time with the United States are already well understood in many “fragments” of the British colonial empire. It was no coincidence that, in anticipation of Brexit, they sought so and achieved in January 2019 the right to issue their own currency under the British abbreviation (state or pound sterling). Although tied to a foreign exchange basket, including the US dollar, the British pound and the euro. Earlier, we recall that pegging was limited to the pound and the dollar.
As you know, complex geopolitical trends and domestic economic problems forced Britain back in the 1972 year to leave the EFTA and join the EU. However, London still refuses to coordinate its monetary and financial policies with Brussels. And even more so, join the eurozone by abolishing the pound - albeit "weakened" over the past half century, but still retaining its role as one of the leading world currencies.
At the same time, the United States methodically contributed to preventing the British pound from being kept as the main (and especially the only) currency within the Commonwealth. At the turn of the 50's and 60's of the last century, the British Empire fell into an extremely difficult financial and economic situation. Almost immediately after the defeat in the war with Egypt for the restoration of British control over the Suez Canal (1956 g.), There was a British "exodus" from Malaya and Ghana (1957 g.).
Here, European countries agreed to impose high duties on British goods, and in parallel, due to the powerful American financial and economic expansion, the pound was forced to leave Canada. But this is still the largest British dominion along with Australia. The Canadian dollar in exchange became pegged only to the US dollar. Washington implemented a similar “operation” against the British pound in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.
The Commonwealth of “Wrong” Nations
The political art of London made it possible to preserve the “pro-British” Commonwealth of Nations in more than 50 states — almost all, let’s emphasize, British ex-colonies and protectorates, although more than half of them in 50’s - 70’s abandoned the status of dominions of the British crown.
However, "thanks" to US financial and economic operations (providing preferential financial assistance in US dollars, understated dollar prices for American exports to the same countries and inflated prices for their exports to the United States, favorable exchange rates for these countries will turn into US dollars, etc. .) almost all the countries participating in the Commonwealth of Nations in the 60-80's pegged their currencies to the US dollar. Although all the same countries are still participating in the Commonwealth free trade zone, they have preferences in the British market.
So it turned out that the British pound was "squeezed out" of the overwhelming majority of Commonwealth countries by the end of the 1980's. But in the name of preserving the common market and political interaction within the Commonwealth, London did not "play" against the US dollar. Although he substituted, figuratively speaking, significant political trips to Washington.
For example, before the Caribbean crisis in the fall of 1962, contrary to Washington's requests, London granted independence to Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, neighboring Cuba. And withdrew from there British military bases. During the period of US aggression in Indochina, London did not allow the use of the territory of nearby British at that time Brunei and the Maldives (however, allowing the same in Chinese Hong Kong).
On the eve of this aggression, London announced (1963) the decolonization of North Borneo and withdrew military bases from there, uniting this region with the already independent Malaya. In addition, London did not heed the US requests on the eve of the same aggression to postpone the declaration of independence of Singapore: it was declared in 1963.
Britons are asked to make room
The United States, as already mentioned, invariably responded more severely, actively supporting all anti-British separatists, as well as Spain’s demands for Gibraltar to join. In the same series of American measures is the “liberation” in 1983 of the East Caribbean Grenada, a member of the Commonwealth of Nations from the pro-Cuban regime M. Bishop. This, incidentally, was done by US troops without inviting British troops.
As a result, Great Britain was supplanted from most of these territories / regions for some two decades, including the evacuation of its military bases from there, the largest of which was the base in Aden (South Yemen). The US anti-British course in China was clearly defined at the end of the 20 of the last century, when Washington supported the demands of Chiang Kai-shek to decolonize and return China to Weihaiwei, the East China port and the adjacent area rented by London. What London did in October 1930
But, if the USA officially recognized the PRC, proclaimed in 1949, only after 30 years (in 1979), then Great Britain and its largest dominions (Australia, Canada, New Zealand) - respectively, in 1950 and at the turn of 60- x / xnumx's.
Meanwhile, London was able to expand the political and economic geography of the Commonwealth: this may indicate the preparation of the ground for a more “open” global economic and political competition of Great Britain, not only with the United States, but also with the EU. Since the former Portuguese Mozambique, the ex-French Cameroon, who left Rwanda from Belgium, the former colony of South Africa, Namibia entered the Commonwealth in the 1990's.
Moreover, according to the British The Independent (26.11.2009), which refers to the British and Australian Foreign Ministries, applications for joining the Commonwealth are submitted or prepared by Algeria, Sudan, South Sudan, Yemen, Madagascar. Their entry into this association is expected no later than 2020 of the year. Apart from both Sudan, these are not ex-British colonies / protectorates. And not at all "small" countries.
As for the competitiveness of the modern British pound and the validity of Washington’s aforementioned concerns, they are very real, justified. Here are the Forex EuroClub analytics (2018):
“The British pound against the US dollar (GBP / USD) is one of the most popular and traded currencies in the Forex market. Despite the fact that Britain does not play any huge economic role in the modern world, as it was in colonial times, in terms of trade volume and volume of reserve investments, the pound usually stands in 3 place after the US dollar and the euro. ”
Pound Sterling Early
Among the main reasons for this situation is the following:
“London remains the second largest financial center in the world, which sets some world prices. In particular, for example, most of the world works under contracts for gold, the price of which is set precisely at London fixing. The money and credit markets, especially the European one, are guided by the Libor rate, which is also set in London. ”
Plus, the British stock market
"It is often the only good alternative to the US stock market to raise equity, because it has more liberal legislation and lower costs for placing securities on the stock exchange."
Additionally,
“There are no relatively independent economies on the European continent, because they either have too large trade turnover within Europe (like Sweden or Switzerland), or even enter into a single currency zone. Britain, however, remained relatively independent in this regard: as far back as 1990, it entered the European mechanism for regulating exchange rates, which was a harbinger of the emergence of the euro.
However, Britain left it two years later after the strongest collapse of the national currency, on which J. Soros earned "(he, in conjunction with the US Federal Reserve, organized this collapse of the pound. - Approx. Auth.). ... the independence of the pound and its low factorial relationship with the euro has led many traders to use it more to diversify their strategies. ”
However, Britain left it two years later after the strongest collapse of the national currency, on which J. Soros earned "(he, in conjunction with the US Federal Reserve, organized this collapse of the pound. - Approx. Auth.). ... the independence of the pound and its low factorial relationship with the euro has led many traders to use it more to diversify their strategies. ”
It is also important that "the pound is not a" commodity "currency like the Australian or Canadian dollars." And London’s non-participation in the Eurozone “enables the British to pursue a completely independent fiscal and monetary policy.” So the pound “remains a popular reserve currency, and London ranks second in the world as a financial center” and because the British financial system, which includes its segments in foreign British territories, “has a low level of risk, despite the modern difficulties in quotes of the pound to other reserve currencies. "
In the confusing situation around Brexit, there are too many interrelated factors. And the escalation of the conflict is primarily due to the preventive measures of Washington and Brussels aimed at preventing the British steps to restore the global financial and economic role of the pound and, accordingly, to strengthen the position of London in the Commonwealth of Nations. To the detriment of the geopolitical and especially global economic interests of the United States and the European Union.
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