Many of those who voted to leave the EU would have been encouraged to do so in order to ‘take back control’ from Brussels. Few voted leave in order to starve public services of funding, reduce regulations that keep them safe, or to allow politicians to wrestle power from the EU in order to hand it back to global corporations. Yet this is what, in effect, is happening. This article, just published in the Journal of Social Policy, considers how the UK’s economic model might change after Brexit, and the implications for social policy.
Brexit has triggered a ‘Dutch’ auction (a phrase that no longer has just figurative meaning) where an increasing number of EU governments are shifting their own public policies in order to persuade British investors to move to them. And it is working. At the same time, having witnessed an important new window of opportunity, corporations are either shifting, investment outside the UK, or are threatening to do so, unless the British government cuts them a deal.
Author: Kevin Farnsworth
Published: August 11, 2017, on the Cambridge Core blog.
