2023-09-12 14:24:07
It is difficult in these conditions to see the positive effects of Brexit. And while the British are holding back, they discover, at the end of August, that the sky might well be falling on their heads. Or rather that of their children.
A few days before the start of the school year, they learn that more than 150 British schools will not be able to reopen their doors because they risk… collapsing. The cause: porous concrete (cheap cellular concrete) used in the construction of many schools until the 1990s, and which is deteriorating in a worrying manner.
Of course, concrete in schools has nothing to do with Europe. Except that Boris Johnson, in the middle of the “Leave” campaign, had promised his compatriots that Brexit would be the end of austerity. The end of cuts in public spending. That by taking our destiny back into our own hands, we would bring money back into the coffers…
Today, there is disillusionment. The school sector does not seem to have been the Conservatives’ priority. Worse, the Johnson government had been aware of the schools problem for several years. And Rishi Sunak, now Prime Minister, but at the time Minister of Finance, is said to have slowed down the work recommended two years ago.
And this is probably just the visible part of the iceberg. A whole series of public buildings were built with this defective concrete. Airports, courts, hospitals too. A Labor MP says she visited a hospital so fragile that obese patients had to be treated on the ground floor.
In short, for many commentators, this scandal is the metaphor of a crumbling United Kingdom. The sign of a country in decline. A country where other scandals once morest a backdrop of public economies are likely to appear in the years to come. Not really the El Dorado that Brexiters imagined.
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