How Foreign Media see UK

 

The first madness of Ophelia
Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882)
Photo Credit: Gallery Oldham [CC BY-NC-ND]

Spain's El Espanol

"21 days with Liz Truss: the pound falls, the Queen dies and the UK has been weakened more than ever since Brexit". It said Truss's first three weeks in office "could not have been more catastrophic"...

[The] "UK seems to have imploded. It should be remembered that the British voted in favour of 'Brexit' in the belief that they would take control and become a stronger country if they managed to throw off the yoke of Europe. Well, the exact opposite seems to be happening. And now that they are no longer under the protection of Brussels, they have no right or access to aid from the 27."

Germany's Bild 

"First Boris Johnson falls, then the Queen dies - and now the British financial system is also shaking. The turbulence on the foreign exchange markets is causing even the most die-hard traders to lose sleep. The Brexit British currently have a nasty money problem. 

The Nobel prize-winning economist Paul Krugman said:

"Trussonomics is deeply stupid." But he tweeted: "It won't cause a global crisis - for God's sake, Britain is only 3.2% of world GDP. While British markets are in a mess, we're a long way from 1976. Get a grip." 

(Matthew Weaver, The Guardian, 2022)

If Kwasi Kwarteng's mini-budget survives the storm it triggered, a banker on a million-pound salary stands to receive £50,000 income tax relief... The government claims the banker will invest it, thus promoting growth. Yet these recipients of the banker's extra money have a long track record of not investing in actual productive capacity. Why would they, when the masses out there can't afford to buy new, high-value products? Instead, big businesses use any funds that come their way either to buy back their own shares or to speculate in the derivatives market or in real estate...

Growth is impervious to the top income tax rates. The data dispels the Tory conviction that Thatcher put Britain onto a brave new path to higher growth. Did the UK catch up after four decades of trickle-down tax policies and assorted deregulation measures, which never happened in France? No...

The problem with zombie ideas is that they encourage other undead ideas to rise up too. It already seems that Kwarteng, instead of killing off the trickle-down zombie, will revive the austerity zombie...

(Yanis Varoufakis, The Guardian, 2022)