Watch: ‘Brexit has devoured its own children’ says Welsh politics professor after Liz Truss resignation
A Welsh politics professor has said that “Brexit has devoured its own children” after the Conservative party lost four Prime Ministers since the vote in 2016.
Prime Minister Liz Truss resigned today and it was part of a pattern of unstable Conservative governments over the last seven years, Professor Richard Wyn Jones said.
Prof. Jones who is the director of the Wales Governance Centre said that Liz Truss’ time in office had been a disaster but that Brexit was the root cause.
“There’s something quite piteous about today,” he told Y Byd yn ei Le. “We had a leadership contest that went on forever – do you remember how long the leadership contest over the summer was?
“She’s lasted some 44 or 45 days. It’s been a complete disaster.
“The most successful political party in the world in some respects, the Conservative Party, elected someone who was completely unable to do the job. She has gone with her tail between her legs.
“But there’s something else going on here. This is six and a half years – seven – of continuous instability.
“You go back to the Brexit referendum in 2016, and since then this nation-state has not had a stable government since then.
“There’s a quote from the French revolution, that the ‘revolution devours its own children’. Brexit has devoured its own children, and there is something pitiable about what has happened over the past few weeks.”
“Mae Brexit wedi bwyta’i blant ei hun.”
Mae ansefydlogrwydd gwleidyddol Prydain, a ffawd Liz Truss â’i wreiddiau yn refferendwm Brexit 2016 yn ôl @RWynJones pic.twitter.com/ieAve2p5o4
— Y Byd yn ei Le (@ybydyneileS4C) October 20, 2022
During her resignation speech, Liz Truss pointed to Brexit when she said that one of the achievements of her six weeks in office was that she had “set out a vision for a low-tax, high-growth economy that would take advantage of the freedoms of Brexit”.
“I recognise though, given the situation, I cannot deliver the mandate on which I was elected by the Conservative Party,” she added.
Plaid Cymru leader Adam Price and Westminster leader Liz Saville Roberts, however, also pointed the finger of blame at Brexit in a joint statement.
“Brexit lies created a vacuum of accountability in Westminster – and allowed talentless zealots to seize the reins of power without an inkling how to use them,” they said.
“People in Wales are looking aghast at the chaos after being lectured for years that we need Westminster to survive.
“We urgently need a General Election so that the people of Wales can reject this Westminster chaos at the ballot box.
“There is a duty now on Welsh Conservative MPs to recognise that their Government’s time is up. Unless they do so, this disgraceful chaos will drag on indefinitely.”
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Okay, but I don’t want to go back to the “stable” government pushing austerity politics which killed more people than covid or the “stable” government that put areas of north of England, Wales, Scotland into managed decline to pursue investment into south-east of England and an over-reliance on global trade… Brexit happened for many reasons but one of those was ordinary people feeling shut out by established order of things so going back to those “stable” days will just lead to another Brexit-like event in next few years/decades. UK had too many problems itself to Brexit, Brexit was pushed for… Read more »
It would help to fix the economy. The Office for Budget Responsibility says that Brexit will cut Britain’s GDP by a hefty four per cent. The Financial Times says that this means £100 billion in lost output, and £40 billion less revenue to the Treasury a year. Pre-Brexit, the British economy was 90 per cent the size of Germany’s; now, it is less than 70 per cent. Even the UK’s Brexit hardline negotiator, Lord Frost, has admitted that quitting the EU appears to have hit goods exports by five per cent. You are forgetting the role that the largely pro-Brexit… Read more »
We need a change of government via a GE ASAP. The country has been trashed by the Tories since at least 2016 and probably earlier due to austerity.
Indeed. Looking at government borrowing and the value of the pound, the “fiscally responsible” Tories were crashing the nation even before 2016. Only last minute lies and empty unfulfilled promises to the Scots saved their blessed Union from destruction at their hands. Apart from some positive stats in 2011, it’s been slowly downhill ever since, turning into a plummet after 2016 and since 2019 we hit rock bottom and started boring through the earth. The y-axis on graphs have to be extended to even show how far we have fallen.