The BoE (Bank of England) decision to increase interest rates to 0.5% was a vote of confidence in Brexit. That was what the headlines should have been in the capitalist press.
When the rate was reduced in August 2016 we were told it was because of the vote to leave the European Union. The decision to leave would have calamitous consequences for the UK economy. Armageddon had been predicted, the sky was about to fall in on us. The BoE had to take steps to protect us. So the interest rate was reduced from 0.5% to 0.25%.
The world carried on. The sky stayed in the sky. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse were NOT sighted.
Mark Carney, the governor of the BoE, might argue that his minuscule change in interest rates was what saved us from collapse. Even if we give him credit for controlling a tsunami of destruction with a minimal interest rate change, he would have to admit that his dire predictions for the referendum result were not borne out by the facts.
So yesterday the BoE decided to return to the rate of interest that had existed before the referendum.
All the media who swallowed the hype about the effect of a Leave vote, and who have attributed every bit if negative news to “Brexit” would surely now concede that this reversal in BoE policy was a recognition that the rate drop fifteen months ago was no longer needed. And that must mean the economy was getting better. Or, at the very least, it was not getting worse.
But no. The interest rate increase has been reported as if it were a drastic measure needed to deal with another catastrophe. Inflation is too high. Unemployment is too full. Whatever rationalisation they give us, they are adamant that leaving the EU is a bad thing.
Meanwhile the British working class look at the reporting and see, yet again, the press have their own agenda. They are not reporting facts. They are not describing events. They are interpreting them, with all the pro-capitalist, pro-establishment bias we have come to expect of them.