Brexiters’ Asia hopes have foundered amid economic woes and hardline nationalism; it’s time to look at markets in our own backyard
The world has changed since, post-Brexit, “Global Britain” set itself to “pivot” from sclerotic Europe towards booming Asia. Always a fanciful idea that disregarded Asian realities, it has now become farcical. Neither China nor India are proving the easy pickings on which “buccaneering” Britain could ride to economic success, denied through being tied to the “corpse” of an EU economy allegedly shackled by regulation and tax. Brexiter ambitions are turning to ashes.
Instead, there is China, run by an ever more openly dictatorial and militarily ambitious communist government. Its economy is plagued by politically inspired production targets: everything from building flats to EV batteries outstripping any likely demand. There is growing youth unemployment and a once fevered, now overblown, property market retrenching to such an extent it threatens the viability of the vastly over-extended banking system.
