In 1992, there was a currency crisis in the UK which dealt a death blow to any prospect of monetary integration into the Euro. What Greece was threatened with was expulsion from the Euro. They backed down. Varoufakis claims he had a contingency plan for exit from the Euro, but this was not true. Greece had the choice of becoming Zimbabwe (Varoufakis had been President of the Black Students Society at his British University) or doubling down on austerity. Syriza's first year in office- when British trained economists had too much say- destroyed their chance of being re-elected. Simply put, the Professors (both Papandreous, pere et fils, were distinguished academics inebriated on their own erudition) proved to be either mendacious or meretricious or both mendacious and meretricious. The bloated, nepotistic, corrupt and incompetent Public Sector has to be reformed and the hard-working, highly intelligent, Private Sector needs to be released from a Sisyphus like tax burden.



There can be no comparison between Varoufakis's tactics and that of Boris Johnson. The former thought the threat of a referendum was still an effective tool because of contagion risk and thus made a fool of himself. The fact is all the PIGS had turned the corner, only Greece- because of an error of the academics- thought that it could get paid off by threatening to detonate a 'dirty bomb' (vide https://socioproctology.blogspot.com/2017/07/adam-tooze-varoufakiss-financial.html.) But Greece was tiny. There was no contagion risk. Its leaving the Euro and defaulting on Sovereign debt would sever its own jugular vein while causing little more than a pin-prick to anyone else.

No doubt, Varoufakis's antics worsened the outcome for Greeks. But antics is all this vaunted 'Game theorist' had to offer(https://socioproctology.blogspot.com/2015/08/varoufakiss-flawed-game-theory.html)- he had no tactics and no strategy. By contrast, Bo Jo has one or two cards which the Eurocrats tremble to name. What are they?

1) The pound is still, just about, a Reserve currency. Vested Corporate interests within Europe and China and so forth will want the pound to have some sort of more or less functional Economy to back it up. This card has grown stronger because the Left & the Right in UK seem more united on Brexit while Europe seems more divided along ideological lines than ever before. In other words, political uncertainty strengthens the pound because it is greater outside than in. This means that, assuming immigration controls are tightened, the country has to pursue productivity enhancing Manpower and Regional policy- which it will have greater freedom to do. This brings me to the second card Bo Jo holds which too is strengthening

2) The future of the WTO itself seems in doubt. We may go back to the days of 'indicative planning' and Corporations being subordinated to Industrial Policy. If Europe was monolithic, this would put the UK at a disadvantage. But Europe isn't monolithic at all. The Visgrad countries are on the point of preferring to keep jobs from going to lower wage candidate countries. In other words, under the seemingly Federalist carapace of the Union, you will have individual countries favoring their own conglomerates and pursuing a nationalist industrial policy. It is likely that there will be a demand for redistribution from the Center. This means National Governments and their Corporate cronies will find the UK a useful trading partner to reduce tax liability.



Will BoJo really secure a good deal for the UK? No. Of course not. Don't be silly. But this does not matter provided the UK takes advantage of lower real exchange rates in the short run as providing fiscal 'breathing room' for the institution of a proper Industrial policy. It may be that this is already happening in an opaque manner in certain regions. As the Brits grow more and more disillusioned with their elite politicians, it may be that they turn their attention to their own back-yards and figure out how to be part of these new, opaque, but sensible, local coalitions. China's rise has to do with such coalitions. But this was true of South Korea and Taiwan and so forth. In Britain, it need not be as corrupt and it certainly can't be authoritarian. But this is merely the natural outcome of disintermediating pedagogues from Economic or Social Policy. Ignore the Pundits, and politicians can concentrate on getting their own snouts into the trough on the basis of parish pump issues. This is the true meaning of subsidiarity.