Reform UK deputy leader Richard Tice has warned Britain is facing a severe near-term economic crisis and should look to the UAE for lessons in ambition, work ethic, energy policy and economic discipline.
Speaking to Arabian Business during a visit to Dubai, Tice said: “Every time I come here, you just see a sense of growth, of change and ambition. Things work.” He added the contrast between the UAE’s dynamism and the UK’s stagnation was now impossible to ignore.
On the UK’s immigration woes, Tice said: “It’s gone into a pretty bad place where you’ve got millions of people from overseas being paid to sit on their backsides, not contributing, not learning the lingo, and not integrating. That’s a disaster. But in the UAE, you’ve got people from all over the world integrating well, and working.”
He linked Britain’s decline in work ethic and standards to cultural complacency and wokeism: “All of that developed because the UK became complacent, and then it became decadent… If you haven’t got proper structures, proper understanding of the difference between right and wrong, it’s remarkable how quickly standards slip.”
Tice’s outlook for the British economy is apocalyptically bleak. He blames a disastrous combination of monetary policy, welfare dependency and energy mismanagement for what is coming: “The UK is going bust. As a nation, we’re going bust. The finances are in a shocking state.
“There’s a whole range of issues, whether it’s the Bank of England making terrible mistakes or printing QE and voluntarily impoverishing the taxpayer, or whether it’s the lunacy of our energy policy and net zero. People have got to understand that money doesn’t grow on trees, and you can’t just expect that you can sit at home and watch Netflix and someone else is going to pay.
“We are heading towards the rocks. We’re going to hit the rocks before the next general election. There is a financial drama coming of some form. You never quite know when and what the trigger is, but it is coming, and it’s going to hurt.”
Tice – whose party is currently far ahead in UK political opinion polls and on course to form the next government – said Britain’s refusal to exploit its own resources had been “ludicrous.”
“You can’t be a rich nation unless you’ve got cheap energy… we’ve made the ludicrous decision basically to leave it underground, to tax it through the roof, which means that lots of the oil and gas explorers are leaving the UK. They’re giving up. It’s almost uninvestible. They’re being pushed out.”
He continued: “For many people from overseas, they view the UK as a quaint place to go on holiday, but completely uninvestable. That’s tragic, it’s disastrous. You’ve got nations like the UAE, they’ve got energy, they’re using it. Other countries sort of look at the UK and say: ‘Great nation. But what’s happened to you?’ Sadly, I think they’re sort of semi-laughing at our stupidity and naivety, our complete naivety, and now they take our money and our jobs. Look, it’s a competitive world. That’s why lots of people are now moving to the UAE… Just this weekend, Boris Johnson has admitted he got it wrong with net zero.”
On the recent phenomenon of widespread waving across the UK of the Union Jack flag – and the controversy caused by former footballer Gary Neville who has criticised it as the action of “angry middle-aged white men” – Tice was unequivocal:
“Look at the UAE. I mean, the flag of the UAE is everywhere, and it generates a pride in the nation. And that is a huge thing, absolutely huge. I think we used to have it in the UK.
“Dear Gary Neville, everybody’s entitled to their own opinions. That’s fine. But I did see a clip of him when he was playing for England, which he did many times. He was a great footballer. But the TV camera was going along all players during the national anthem. He wasn’t singing. I thought that’s interesting. He wasn’t singing the national anthem, and now he doesn’t want to fly the Union Flag of our United Kingdom. Makes you wonder.”
Tice confirmed there would be no way back for former Reform MP Rupert Lowe, who recently resigned from the party after falling out with leader Nigel Farage. “Rupert won’t be coming back to Reform. What’s done is done… Usually you say never say never. Sometimes you just have to say ‘never’.”
On former UK prime minister Boris Johnson, he said: “Boris, bless him, he’s good company, and he’s a great orator, but he did impose mass immigration, which has been a catastrophe. And he did impose net stupid zero, which has been a catastrophe. Now he’s recanting from it, but his brand is toxic. He may find that very difficult to believe, but his brand, and the Conservative brand, is now toxic.”
The full interview will be published in the November issue of Arabian Business magazine.
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