This week marked the third anniversary of Brexit but it was marked by a singular silence in most of the nation’s media. The anniversary of the event that once dominated the news and tore the nation in half was quietly ignored as of no consequence.

At the same time the International Monetary Fund (IMF) chose this moment to downgrade its forecast for the UK economy. This left the UK as the only major economy expected to shrink this year. Even Russia, hit by sanctions, is forecast to do better than the UK.

Disruptive strikes

This week we have also seen the greatest level of economic and social disruption due to strikes than we have seen since the 1970s. I remember the time when then Prime Minister Harold Wilson used to invite the leaders of striking workers to 10 Downing Street where, over a pot of beer, he would listen to them setting out their case; he would follow this by personally explaining what was going on in the nation’s economy.

Today, public sector workers in every part of the economy are simply ignored, not only by the Prime Minister and senior ministers, but even by lowly officials tasked to speak for the Government. The level of frustration among strikers is rising to dangerous levels that could be a threat to public law and order. Will nobody in Government listen to these public sector workers?

We borrowed eye-watering amounts to pull the nation through the Covid crisis, but unlike most other economies, our workforce has not bounded back to bring some measure of additional relative prosperity to the nation.

I wonder if the Government is afraid to tell the people that there is no money in the public purse to pay for salary rises that will compensate for the rising cost of living that every household is facing. Is it only the IMF that recognises the true state of our economy? We borrowed eye-watering amounts to pull the nation through the Covid crisis, but unlike most other economies, our workforce has not bounded back to bring some measure of additional relative prosperity to the nation.

Brexit surplus?

All this gloomy news on the economy is in stark contrast to the optimistic forecasts we were given in the run-up to Brexit. We were told that the vast sums we used to pay into the EU would now be used to support our ailing Health Service and to improve our schools and other public services, as well as to administer all that the EU had taken over and would no longer be doing for the UK. Of course, we know that Covid intervened and stopped all that, but those in developing nations continue to believe that life will be better in the UK than in their own nations.

We were also told that we would be in control of our own borders and be able to admit workers that we need and to ban others. In actual fact, today we lack agricultural workers, care workers and people to serve in our restaurants and hotels, but we are attracting thousands for the wrong reasons and without these skills. It is small wonder the economy is shrinking rather than prospering. But why have all our Brexit hopes evaporated like a morning mist?

Stemming the tide of social change

First, we have to remember who it was who wanted Brexit. Of course, there was a large number of mainly older people who were ardent ‘patriots’ – a few of whom were openly xenophobic. But there was also a significant number of Bible-believing evangelical Christians who desperately wanted to be free from the secularising pressures of the European Union that were steadily undermining the Christian heritage that had formed the biblical principles upon which Britain and the Empire had flourished.

It is small wonder the economy is shrinking rather than prospering. But why have all our Brexit hopes evaporated like a morning mist?

This group was more than simply banging the drum for the ‘good old days’. They could see the radical changes that had taken place in their lifetime and they thought that Brexit would stem the tide of social change that was driving the nation towards a social and moral maelstrom.

Ignoring biblical values

In this magazine, while we took a broadly pro-Brexit line, we blew clear trumpets of warning that without some kind of revival of biblical values the nation was on track for disaster. To go it alone was a disastrous policy without having faith in God and asserting biblical values of morality, whereby people recognise their obligations and responsibilities as well as drawing upon the state. Unless people recognise the need to care for one another as well as to look after their own self-interests, Brexit would not work. Without biblically-based personal and moral values we said that Brexit would be a recipe for disaster, not prosperity.

Without biblically-based personal and moral values we said that Brexit would be a recipe for disaster, not prosperity.

Those warnings have all been ignored, not only by political leaders who are driven by ‘woke’ values with an emphasis on the rising ‘me’ culture, but by church leaders who have little or no commitment to upholding biblical truth. With senior bishops advocating same-sex marriage and deliberately undermining biblical truth there are virtually no signs of the spiritual revival that was needed in order to make Brexit work.

Rediscovering truth

In our view it is not the politicians who are primarily responsible for not leading the nation into the uplands of prosperity that were promised in the Brexit propaganda – it is the leaders of the Christian churches who have failed the nation. Unless the Lord builds the house, the labourers work in vain; and this principle applies as much to the nation as it does to individual housebuilders.

I remember that in the early days of the great debate on the use of nuclear power for weapons of mass destruction, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, a brilliant secular ‘prophet’, said that the only thing that could save the world from eventual destruction was spiritual revival. He said we need revival for survival. If ever such a statement were true it is surely today. With Putin sabre-rattling and his hands hovering over nuclear buttons and the Western nations pouring more sophisticated weapons into the hands of the Ukrainians, the prospects for world peace are not great. 

Without spiritual revival and the rediscovery of truth as set out in the word of God bringing back a renewed emphasis of valuing others above ourselves, we are heading for a moral and spiritual graveyard.

At the same time, the foundations of the Western nations are crumbling and even if peace in Eastern Europe is achieved, we have to ask – what sort of civilisation are we preserving? Certainly, it is true of Britain that without spiritual revival and the rediscovery of truth as set out in the word of God bringing back a renewed emphasis of valuing others above ourselves, we are heading for a moral and spiritual graveyard – not the bonanza that Brexit promised.

The big question facing us is whether or not the Bible-believing remnant can still find the power to declare the word of the Lord to the nation.