Britain’s Broken Economic Model and Why Brexit isn’t the Cure

Simon Deakin, Director of the Centre for Business Research and Professor of Law at the University of Cambridge, tells the Cambridge Public Policy SRI (Strategic Research Initiative) why Brexit isn’t the cure for Britain’s broken economic model. On 16 November 2018 the SRI and the CBR, the Centre for Business Research, University of Cambridge, are holding a conference in Cambridge on Brexit with the aim of encouraging interdisciplinary discussion amongst academics and further research on the implications of the UK leaving the EU for public policy.This is the third of a series of podcasts which the Public Policy SRI has commissioned with key speakers involved in the Cambridge event.In this audio podcast Professor Deakin explains that Britain’s low-wage, low productivity economy is the result of forty years of neoliberal economic policies. While some on the Left think that Brexit will allow a reset of British economic policy, Deakin explains why this view is implausible. Even a benign or ‘soft’ Brexit will cause a shock to Britain’s trading relations that will have long-lasting consequences. If there is a hard, no-deal Brexit, the effect will be akin to ‘shock therapy’ of the kind inflicted by neoliberal policy makers on the former Soviet Union in the early 1990s.