{"id":209903,"date":"2025-10-13T13:29:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-13T13:29:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/209903\/"},"modified":"2025-10-13T13:29:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-13T13:29:09","slug":"im-glad-we-can-now-admit-that-brexit-is-a-problem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/209903\/","title":{"rendered":"I\u2019m glad we can now admit that Brexit is a problem"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wes Streeting has said he is delighted that Sir Keir Starmer is planning to blame Brexit for raising taxes in next month\u2019s budget as he expressed \u201cfrustration\u201d at being unable to speak out about the \u201cproblems\u201d caused by leaving the European Union. <\/p>\n

The Times revealed on Saturday<\/a> that the prime minister and his chancellor, Rachel Reeves, will open up a new attack against Nigel Farage by blaming him for delivering Brexit with \u201ceasy sloganeering\u201d but without having a plan.<\/p>\n

They will effectively lay the responsibility of tax rises in next month\u2019s budget <\/a>on Farage by citing official figures suggesting that if Britain had not left the EU the economy would be about \u00a3120 billion bigger by 2035 than current forecasts suggest. This is due to a significant downgrade in Britain\u2019s productivity, which has been lower than forecast. <\/p>\n

Speaking on a panel at the Cliveden Literary Festival, Streeting, the health secretary, said the country faces an \u201cenormous amount of jeopardy\u201d and admitted he feels \u201canxious\u201d about the future because of the \u201cdeep structural problems in our economy\u201d. <\/p>\n

He said: \u201cWe had over a decade of low productivity, low growth, and therefore you end up a with high burden of taxation and people paying more through their taxes and feeling they are getting less because they are.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asked how much Brexit can be blamed, Streeting referenced the article in The Times and added: \u201cIt\u2019s part of it. There\u2019s no doubt that that\u2019s the other problem we\u2019re dealing with. I\u2019m glad that Brexit is a problem whose name we now dare speak.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2022 Keir Starmer\u2019s plan to blame Nigel Farage for budget tax rises<\/a><\/p>\n

He said that while he had \u201cenormous respect\u201d for people who voted to \u201ctake back control\u201d, there had not been a proper debate about the problems it had caused economically.<\/p>\n

Streeting said: \u201cThis has been my frustration about it \u2026 we were warned it was going to have an economic impact and it has. And it\u2019s hit our country hard, so we\u2019re having to deal with Brexit. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re having to deal with the structural problems in the British economy, and we are doing that by creating stability and the conditions in which people can invest confidently in our country, recognising that governments don\u2019t create growth, but we can help to create the conditions for businesses to grow and thrive, and that\u2019s what we\u2019ve got to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added: \u201cWe\u2019re also trying to have a more rational conversation with our biggest and nearest trading partners, the European Union, by resetting that relationship, and beginning to build back what we have lost.\u201d<\/p>\n

Streeting also said he did not expect small business owners to suffer again following last year\u2019s tax hike in employer national insurance contributions. <\/p>\n

Asked if small businesses were likely to be hit again, Streeting said: \u201cNo, I don\u2019t think so, because, you know, I think that the choices we\u2019ve made, we haven\u2019t made lightly, and without recognising the impact that it does have on people and on businesses.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reeves<\/a> is having to consider a range of tax hikes to fill a black hole in the public finances of \u00a320 to \u00a330 billion due to dire economic forecasts from the Office for Budget Responsibility. The spending watchdog has concluded that the performance of Britain\u2019s economy over the past decade was even more anaemic than previously thought. <\/p>\n

Among the options being considered is raising income tax, which would break Labour\u2019s manifesto promise not to raise the three main taxes, which also include VAT and national insurance. <\/p>\n

Richard Tice, the deputy leader of Reform, accused Starmer of hypocrisy for planning to pin the blame for economic failure on Farage. <\/p>\n

He said: \u201cFirst Keir blamed the Tories; now he is blaming Nigel, reaffirming his brand of \u2018two-tier Keir\u2019. Third time lucky he should send Rachel back to the complaints department. Hypocrite-in-chief Keir is running out of people to blame after over a year in office. Voters know he is to blame.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jeremy Hunt, speaking at the Cheltenham Literature Festival, revealed he would now vote for Brexit if the EU referendum were held today. <\/p>\n

\"Jeremy<\/p>\n

Jeremy Hunt, pictured at the Cheltenham Literature Festival, supported Britain remaining in the EU in the 2016 referendum<\/p>\n

ADRIAN SHERRATT<\/p>\n

The former chancellor, who was a leading Remain campaigner in David Cameron\u2019s government in 2016, said: \u201cI voted to remain. I\u2019m not sure I would today and let me explain why I think the world is so dangerous and so volatile, there is a premium on nimbleness and flexibility today. <\/p>\n

\u201cThat was not actually the case in 2016. I even then had no doubt that Britain could flourish inside the EU or outside the EU, but we have to be honest, that it is a different economic model. <\/p>\n

\u201cIf you\u2019re inside the EU, we had a very straightforward model. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe were just going to be the most pro-business, low tax, foreign investment, friendly economy inside the single market, and we hoover up all those people who wanted to sell into the single market. <\/p>\n

\u201cYou can\u2019t obviously have that model outside the single market. So you have to think like an Israel or a Taiwan or Korea, and you have to say, what is the sector, or sectors where we\u2019re going to clean up, globally. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re going to really make things or do things that other people want to buy and I don\u2019t believe, unlike some representatives that you know, voting to leave is an automatic ticket to huge prosperity.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s entirely up to us whether we do this, but there is a perfectly good economic model, and there\u2019s no reason with an economy bigger than Canada or Australia, we can\u2019t be as successful as them.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wes Streeting has said he is delighted that Sir Keir Starmer is planning to blame Brexit for raising…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":209904,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[45,49,48,46],"class_list":["post-209903","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-economy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209903","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=209903"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209903\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/209904"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=209903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=209903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=209903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}