The article about British families being left poorer by a hard Brexit due to increased food prices is really so much fearmongering by the same technocratico-mediatic class that was adamantly opposed to the idea of Brexit in the first place. Apparently, short of an agreement with the EU the UK will have no choice but to slap high WTO tariffs on European food that the UK relies on much, and the substantial tariffs will translate into higher food prices. So far, so good. But the long, detailed analysis of the hardships imposed on the poorer sections of British society assumes that the UK government will collect billions of pounds of tariffs and then promptly set it on fire. In the real world, of course, the government has all the tools it needs to return that money to UK consumers. It can lower sales and value-added taxes, lower income tax, raise pensions and or jobseeker allowance and make sure that the tariffs are revenue-neutral to everyone. Painting an apocalyptic picture of poverty due to government collecting billions of new revenues and then doing nothing with it (what someone quoted in the article, it must be said, described as “in the absence of the government redistributing that money”) is crass demagoguery. Of course the goverment will do something with that money. Of course it will not sit on it. The authors of the report themselves don’t believe for a second the government would do nothing with that money. They should stop playing dumb, peddling crude agitprop and stop pretending to care for the poor.
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