This week, we saw that the Conservative government in Westminster has lost any sense of moral bearing and is willing to destroy the economy.
The “mini budget” announced last week has been roundly denounced, not only across the political spectrum, but across the world.
The UK is now being talked of in terms usually reserved for emerging markets.
Even though the UK economy is the seventh largest in the world, it is now in total meltdown: after having left and then alienated its closest trading bloc, it has seen had an alarmingly untested new PM thrust to power. Within weeks, she’s created a self-inflicted currency crisis.
All of this follows a period of Tory austerity which undermined the state’s economic and social resilience.
You don't need me to tell you that the consequences for ordinary people are potentially dire.
The fall in the value of the pound will make it more expensive for the UK to import goods from abroad, so people's weekly shop will get even more expensive than it is already due to inflation.
Mortgage rates could soon increase to levels not seen for over a decade, adding hundreds every month to average mortgage and credit card repayments. Many families will simply not be able to afford this and will lose their homes.
The fact that the markets are spooked (because they think the UK’s plans carry so much risk) also means that the cost of borrowing will increase for the UK. This cost will be borne by you, the taxpayer.
This UK government, for months, has faced a crisis that could lead to avoidable deaths.
Rather than meet this challenge with the seriousness it deserved, they’ve taken the opportunity to implement fantasy politics based on discredited ideological obsessions.
Unlike the Financial Crash of 2008, Black Wednesday and Wilson’s devaluation, which were events that had global or continental causes, or were exacerbated by unsuccessful but genuine attempts to solve a fiscal problem, this latest catastrophe was wholly a creation of the Tories.
And what makes all this worse is the sheer immorality that motivated the crisis. The Tories wanted to make their millionaire friends richer, at a time when poor people are unable to pay their bills and put food on the table.
The Tories will now be voted out in two years’ time. But they will eventually return.
For as long as we are tethered to Westminster, the only way to avoid our economy being trashed like this again would be for a future Westminster government to implement full devolution (confederalism or devo max), including transferring all powers over tax and welfare, so that the Tories can never trash the living standards of the people of Wales again.
But even that wouldn't carry every guarantee: in a true reversal of forecasts, more and more people would now argue that Welsh independence would represent a more hopeful, and indeed, less risky future - less risky, after all, than remaining tied to a Westminster system which is seemingly intent on self-destruction.
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