Straight from the horse's mouth - "Brexit has failed".

[JamesWales]

Re: Straight from the horse's mouth - "Brexit has failed".

It's always interesting when you move away from your trusted Trading Economics website. Perhaps in this instance the first quarter 2022 growth for the UK of 10.6% that was the residue of the recovery from the biggest slide in the G7 being stripped out of the Year on Year GDP figures didn't paint quite the picture you wanted. A bit like looking at the league table at Christmas instead of the end of March.

And as facts go. We are still the only G7 country still to recover our GDP to a position it was pre-pandemic aren't we?

https://tradingeconomics.com/

Why wouldnt we trust a website that collects and presents official statistics? Seems a better basis for a debate than an interview with Nigel Farage (that also misrepresented what he said) doesn't it?

I have quite clearly stated that 2020, 2021 and 2022 data is beset by the problems caused by Covid and Ukraine. Do you want me to say that again? When I did say that, I was asked what is wrong with existing data (presumably for 2022, I guess?) so I presented that and provided a link to an IMF report and then others moan about that!

None of this stuff, however you look at it, points to the abject failure and disaster that you want to think is happening, although yes, due to a much larger collapse in 2020 we are, I believe the only G7 country not to rise above our GDP from before the pandemic.

Do you agree that notwithstanding another year like the last three, that 2023 may prove to be the first year since leaving the EU that starts to provide a better picture of things?

[the other bob wilson]

Re: Straight from the horse's mouth - "Brexit has failed".

Why wouldnt we trust a website that collects and presents official statistics? Seems a better basis for a debate than an interview with Nigel Farage (that also misrepresented what he said) doesn't it?

I have quite clearly stated that 2020, 2021 and 2022 data is beset by the problems caused by Covid and Ukraine. Do you want me to say that again? When I did say that, I was asked what is wrong with existing data (presumably for 2022, I guess?) so I presented that and provided a link to an IMF report and then others moan about that!

None of this stuff, however you look at it, points to the abject failure and disaster that you want to think is happening, although yes, due to a much larger collapse in 2020 we are, I believe the only G7 country not to rise above our GDP from before the pandemic.

Do you agree that notwithstanding another year like the last three, that 2023 may prove to be the first year since leaving the EU that starts to provide a better picture of things?

https://www.resolutionfoundation.org/press-releases/brexit-has-damaged-britains-competitiveness-and-will-make-us-poorer-in-the-decade-ahead/

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-64450882

https://obr.uk/forecasts-in-depth/the-economy-forecast/brexit-analysis/#assumptions

https://www.economicsobservatory.com/how-has-brexit-affected-business-investment-in-the-uk

https://edition.cnn.com/2022/12/24/economy/brexit-uk-economy/index.html

https://www.ft.com/content/e39d0315-fd5b-47c8-8560-04bb786f2c13

I'll stop at six, but there's plenty more.

[cyril evans awaydays]

Re: Straight from the horse's mouth - "Brexit has failed".

Why wouldnt we trust a website that collects and presents official statistics? Seems a better basis for a debate than an interview with Nigel Farage (that also misrepresented what he said) doesn't it?

I have quite clearly stated that 2020, 2021 and 2022 data is beset by the problems caused by Covid and Ukraine. Do you want me to say that again? When I did say that, I was asked what is wrong with existing data (presumably for 2022, I guess?) so I presented that and provided a link to an IMF report and then others moan about that!

None of this stuff, however you look at it, points to the abject failure and disaster that you want to think is happening, although yes, due to a much larger collapse in 2020 we are, I believe the only G7 country not to rise above our GDP from before the pandemic.

Do you agree that notwithstanding another year like the last three, that 2023 may prove to be the first year since leaving the EU that starts to provide a better picture of things?

In fairness I never mentioned Farage, who thinks Brexit could still be great if it was implemented along his lines and by competent people like him. That his vision looks remarkably like the Kwarteng budget tells its own story.

I simply asked why you discarded the most up to date stats from your favourite website showing year on year GDP growth as soon as you open the page in favour of finding something on Page 29 of a pdf on a different site.

I don't agree that you can discount the last three years of data in favour of a year zero approach. Four G7 countries were impacted by Brexit in addition to Covid and Ukraine/Energy Crisis as friction was introduced in trading relationships with one of them. Only that one is yet to return to the level of output where officially leaving the EU and those rules applying and Covid kicking in started. Surely a sceptical mind like yours would question the reason why.

[JamesWales]

Re: Straight from the horse's mouth - "Brexit has failed".

https://www.resolutionfoundation.org...-decade-ahead/

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-64450882

https://obr.uk/forecasts-in-depth/the-economy-forecast/brexit-analysis/#assumptions

https://www.economicsobservatory.com/how-has-brexit-affected-business-investment-in-the-uk

https://edition.cnn.com/2022/12/24/economy/brexit-uk-economy/index.html

https://www.ft.com/content/e39d0315-fd5b-47c8-8560-04bb786f2c13

I'll stop at six, but there's plenty more.

Of course there is. There's a tonne of articles like that pumped out almost daily. Very few of which actually calmly look at data comparing the UK to our peers in a calm and rational way. The real data there is that in 2022 our GDP growth was higher, unemployment lower, stock market higher, wages to inflation better (but still poor) etc etc. That's the reality, and yes much of the media is not telling you the full story at all

[life on mars]

Re: Straight from the horse's mouth - "Brexit has failed".

Lot of people I know have had wage rises and members of my family got jobs due to less Eastern European labour which in all honesty kept wages down and UK residents out work , particularly young lads and folk over 50 .

[JamesWales]

Re: Straight from the horse's mouth - "Brexit has failed".

In fairness I never mentioned Farage, who thinks Brexit could still be great if it was implemented along his lines and by competent people like him. That his vision looks remarkably like the Kwarteng budget tells its own story.

I simply asked why you discarded the most up to date stats from your favourite website showing year on year GDP growth as soon as you open the page in favour of finding something on Page 29 of a pdf on a different site.

I don't agree that you can discount the last three years of data in favour of a year zero approach. Four G7 countries were impacted by Brexit in addition to Covid and Ukraine/Energy Crisis as friction was introduced in trading relationships with one of them. Only that one is yet to return to the level of output where officially leaving the EU and those rules applying and Covid kicking in started. Surely a sceptical mind like yours would question the reason why.

No you didn't, but the entire thread is based on an interview with Nige, and yet it's the guy who quite literally posting statistics from the IMF that gets called out! So interview with partisan politician=good evidence. Real IMF data = Bad data? That is certainly very modern thinking, whether it's 2022 or 2023 I don't know!

I haven't discounted anything. I'm merely saying that data from the last three years is plainly clouded by huge external factors that mean an assessment of Brexit is very difficult to make, and as such 2023 will give a clearer picture. This doesn't seem like a remotely controversial thing to say to me.

I am sorry that the full year 2022 GDP data is on page 9 of the IMF global update I posted. I will have a word with them. I mentioned the page to help people find it. Yeah, slightly hidden isn't it, and less SHOUTY than headlines.

I will very rarely refer to G7 by the way. It's a very arbitrary group and I will always try to compare to Western peers of a greater number than 7. Not that it makes it irrelevant, because it really doesn't, but it's a very small number and at any point four of them are BEST!!, WORST!!, SECOND BEST!!, BEST!! etc. If you look at the data though the huge fall was in 2020 which was generally worse for us than others. I don't know why that was. Possibly we weren't sufficiently prepared?

[life on mars]

Re: Straight from the horse's mouth - "Brexit has failed".

as you appear to use the IMF data alot James here is another from them in terms of the future

World's biggest economies in 2028, projected by IMF.

���� United States: $32.3 trillion
���� China: $27.4 trillion
���� India: $5.5 trillion
���� Japan: $5.3 trillion
���� Germany: $5 trillion
���� United Kingdom: $4.2 trillion
���� France: $3.3 trillion
���� Brazil: $2.7 trillion
���� Canada: $2.6 trillion
���� Italy: $2.4 trillion
���� Russia: $2.2 trillion
���� South Korea: $2.1 trillion
���� Indonesia: $2 trillion
���� Australia: $2 trillion
���� Mexico: $2 trillion
���� Spain: $1.7 trillion
���� Turkey: $1.3 trillion
���� Netherlands: $1.2 trillion
���� Saudi Arabia: $1.2 trillion
���� Switzerland: $1.1 trillion
���� Poland: $1 trillion
���� Taiwan: $0.99 trillion
���� Nigeria: $0.9 trillion
���� Thailand: $0.7 trillion
���� Ireland: $0.7 trillion
���� Bangladesh: $0.7 trillion
���� Vietnam: $0.7 trillion
���� Argentina: $0.7 trillion

my question is how can they project this ? alot can happen in 5 years

India . China . USA ?? Check out the average pay might explain why they sit where they are

[the other bob wilson]

Re: Straight from the horse's mouth - "Brexit has failed".

Of course there is. There's a tonne of articles like that pumped out almost daily. Very few of which actually calmly look at data comparing the UK to our peers in a calm and rational way. The real data there is that in 2022 our GDP growth was higher, unemployment lower, stock market higher, wages to inflation better (but still poor) etc etc. That's the reality, and yes much of the media is not telling you the full story at all

There aren’t just articles there, there are reports - real data as you call it.

[JamesWales]

Re: Straight from the horse's mouth - "Brexit has failed".

There aren’t just articles there, there are reports - real data as you call it.

All presented through the sometimes distorted lens of the media. Well, here is the same for Germany, all negative articles from the last few months. From this, can we assume that staying in the EU has "failed"? I would suggest not.

https://think.ing.com/snaps/german-zew-may23/

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-05-16/german-investor-outlook-weakens-as-recession-concerns-resurface

https://www.euractiv.com/section/politics/news/eu-paper-predicts-sombre-future-for-the-german-economy/

https://www.politico.eu/article/german-economy-shrank-0-4-percent-at-year-end/

https://www.reuters.com/markets/europe/german-economy-stagnates-q1-2023-04-28/

https://www.ft.com/content/dc978c84-64c4-42cd-bfe5-7d59e1441475

[the other bob wilson]

Re: Straight from the horse's mouth - "Brexit has failed".

All presented through the sometimes distorted lens of the media. Well, here is the same for Germany, all negative articles from the last few months. From this, can we assume that staying in the EU has "failed"? I would suggest not.

https://think.ing.com/snaps/german-zew-may23/

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-05-16/german-investor-outlook-weakens-as-recession-concerns-resurface

https://www.euractiv.com/section/politics/news/eu-paper-predicts-sombre-future-for-the-german-economy/

https://www.politico.eu/article/german-economy-shrank-0-4-percent-at-year-end/

https://www.reuters.com/markets/europe/german-economy-stagnates-q1-2023-04-28/

https://www.ft.com/content/dc978c84-...5-7d59e1441475

Did you bother looking at the links I posted? Two of them were from studies produced by the organisation linked to and another one was from the office of budget responsibility - you’re the one relying on the “sometimes distorted lens of the media”.

[pipster]

Re: Straight from the horse's mouth - "Brexit has failed".

https://www.resolutionfoundation.org...-decade-ahead/

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-64450882

https://obr.uk/forecasts-in-depth/the-economy-forecast/brexit-analysis/#assumptions

https://www.economicsobservatory.com/how-has-brexit-affected-business-investment-in-the-uk

https://edition.cnn.com/2022/12/24/economy/brexit-uk-economy/index.html

https://www.ft.com/content/e39d0315-fd5b-47c8-8560-04bb786f2c13

I'll stop at six, but there's plenty more.

The FT is a paid link - so unless you are a signed up member - did you read it (or even check it was a paid link) or just cut paste in the thread to make it look like you had....

The bbc was interesting "There was an initial dip in the amount the UK exported to the EU. Once teething problems were dealt with, trade volumes, recovered to pre-pandemic levels, according to official figures. But it could be argued trade might have grown more if it hadn't been for Brexit."

I thought you stated 'facts' rather than opinion. But anyway - it is very hard to know where we would have been - as we've had covid for 2-3 years and then Ukraine. So saying we could have been better hmmn.... We could have stayed in the Prem if the plane didn't crash or we may have gone down, if it turned out he wasnt that great after all.

As I said a few pages back - doing work for a logistics company that has had to deal first hand with all the Brexit regs and paper work, I'm amazed we are even still in one piece as a country. But - the company I did some work for - are on top of it now - new systems and processes in place and they are doing lots of trade globally as well as EU countries.

To see how things have panned out - I'd give it about 3-4 years (or whenever Ukraine settles down a bit). On the whole though - so far, the admin / process - seems to have been pretty woeful (probably as this has never happened before)

[az city]

Re: Straight from the horse's mouth - "Brexit has failed".

Did you bother looking at the links I posted? Two of them were from studies produced by the organisation linked to and another one was from the office of budget responsibility - you’re the one relying on the “sometimes distorted lens of the media”.

Bob, you're wasting your time with Jimbo. He has a tin ear when it comes to reason. Jimbo doesn't know what he's talking about.

[Wales-Bales]

Re: Straight from the horse's mouth - "Brexit has failed".

All presented through the sometimes distorted lens of the media. Well, here is the same for Germany, all negative articles from the last few months. From this, can we assume that staying in the EU has "failed"? I would suggest not.

Jimbo, you're wasting your time with Bob. He has a tin ear when it comes to reason. Bob doesn't know what he's talking about.

[JamesWales]

Re: Straight from the horse's mouth - "Brexit has failed".

Bob, you're wasting your time with Jimbo. He has a tin ear when it comes to reason. Jimbo doesn't know what he's talking about.

It's been a strange few years hasn't it. And at the end of it your vision of reason is a Nigel Farage TV interview and your vision of a lack of reason is the presentation of GDP growth figures by the IMF. Funny old world!

[the other bob wilson]

Re: Straight from the horse's mouth - "Brexit has failed".

The FT is a paid link - so unless you are a signed up member - did you read it (or even check it was a paid link) or just cut paste in the thread to make it look like you had....

The bbc was interesting "There was an initial dip in the amount the UK exported to the EU. Once teething problems were dealt with, trade volumes, recovered to pre-pandemic levels, according to official figures. But it could be argued trade might have grown more if it hadn't been for Brexit."

I thought you stated 'facts' rather than opinion. But anyway - it is very hard to know where we would have been - as we've had covid for 2-3 years and then Ukraine. So saying we could have been better hmmn.... We could have stayed in the Prem if the plane didn't crash or we may have gone down, if it turned out he wasnt that great after all.

As I said a few pages back - doing work for a logistics company that has had to deal first hand with all the Brexit regs and paper work, I'm amazed we are even still in one piece as a country. But - the company I did some work for - are on top of it now - new systems and processes in place and they are doing lots of trade globally as well as EU countries.

To see how things have panned out - I'd give it about 3-4 years (or whenever Ukraine settles down a bit). On the whole though - so far, the admin / process - seems to have been pretty woeful (probably as this has never happened before)

How do you know about what I've said a few years ago? You've only been posting on here for five months?

I know the FT is behind a paywall, that's why I was surprised that I was able to read the whole article when I first clicked on that link - it's not showing it any more now though.

I've managed to find the article, from November of last year, on Twitter, here it is.



Chris Giles in London NOVEMBER 30 2022
953
Print this page
This is the first part in a new FT series, Brexit: the next phase.

Almost two years after Britain left the EU, economists have reached a consensus: Brexit has significantly worsened the country’s economic performance.

They agree that the vote to leave the bloc has made households poorer, that negotiating uncertainties have taken their toll on business investment and that new barriers to trade have damaged economic links between the UK and EU.

While economists and officials do not agree on the precise magnitude of the Brexit effect, they consider it to be large. They also agree that new trade agreements with countries such as Australia and regulatory freedoms gained from leaving the bloc do not come close to offsetting the damage.

Andrew Bailey, Bank of England governor, told MPs this month that the central bank assumed that Brexit would cause “a long-run downshift in the level of productivity of a bit over 3 per cent” — most of which had already happened. “We have not changed our view on that so far,” he said.

The Office for Budget Responsibility, the fiscal watchdog, expects the UK economy to end up 4 per cent smaller than it would otherwise have been — a £100bn a year hit to prosperity — leaving the public finances less sustainable in part due to “a significant adverse impact on UK trade”.

Some former officials have gone further. “Put it this way, in 2016 the British economy was 90 per cent the size of Germany’s,” said Mark Carney, former BoE governor. “Now it is less than 70 per cent.”

Brexit: the next phase

• Brexit and the economy: the hit has been ‘substantially negative’

• The UK-Australia trade deal: “too much for far too little”

• Brexit: Has business found its voice?

• Politics and Brexit: Fear of the ‘B’ word

The Canadian former governor has been widely criticised for his use of this statistic, with Jonathan Portes, professor of economics and public policy at King’s College London, saying the apparently dramatic contraction stemmed from currency movements, not Brexit. But Portes also acknowledged that there is no doubt that the negative effects of Brexit can be seen both in UK economic data and in-depth academic work.

Before the 2016 referendum, Brexiters such as Lord Daniel Hannan, an adviser to the Board of Trade, worried that having close trade ties with EU held back the UK economy. Britain was “shackled to a corpse”, he said.

But since the eve of the coronavirus pandemic, the UK’s economy has underperformed compared with every other G7 counterpart and it is the only one not to have recovered to its size in late 2019.

The OECD expects the UK’s performance over the next two years to be worse than any other advanced economy bar Russia.


Though these comparisons provide many headlines, academic economists worry that such summary statistics might be polluted by specific UK-related Covid-19 weakness or energy shock effects.

To identify specific Brexit economic impacts, they use various methods to build a so-called counterfactual — a simulated history of the UK if it had stayed in the EU — and then compare it with the reality of Britain’s economy after the Brexit referendum.

In two areas, there is now a clear consensus allowing them to say with certainty that the Brexit hit to UK prosperity was, as Swati Dhingra, an external member of the BoE’s Monetary Policy Committee, recently remarked, “undeniable”.


First, sterling depreciated more than 10 per cent after the Brexit vote in 2016 and has remained at this level ever since. This drop raised import prices, business costs and inflation, but failed to boost wages, exports or the competitiveness of the UK economy. The Resolution Foundation estimated that the depreciation raised import prices and overall inflation. It calculated that as a result real wages fell 2.9 per cent, costing households £870 every year on average.


The second clear effect has been on business investment, which has flatlined in real terms since after 2016 before falling during the pandemic.

Simon French, chief economist at Panmure Gordon, said that Brexit resulted in a rise in the cost of capital for UK companies as investors worried about diminished prospects of doing business in Britain. While he said other countries also saw weak business investment during the pandemic, the effect was much worse in the UK and looking at EU and US trends “suggests a material undershoot [of investment] of around £60bn a year”.


Most of the latest academic efforts have tried to quantify the trade impact of Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal, the Trade and Cooperation Agreement, which came into force at the start of 2021.

This work has been frustrated by statistical agencies in both the UK and EU changing the collection of import and export data and by disagreements on how best to identify a Brexit effect. But the results of studies now appearing suggest very large drops in trade between the UK and the EU, a decline in the variety of goods traded, a loss of trading relationships between companies and similar patterns in services.

“There is strong evidence the TCA has reduced the UK’s trade with the EU around 15 per cent so far,” said Thomas Sampson, associate professor at the London School of Economics. But he noted that the UK’s trade with the rest of the world had also decreased by similar amounts, leading him to be “not 100 per cent convinced we’ve seen a [Brexit] effect on exports so far”.

Other academics are less worried about the split between trade with the EU and the rest of the world, saying that there has been a definitive UK-specific drop in trade performance coinciding with Brexit.

Martina Lawless, a research professor in Ireland’s Economic and Social Research Institute, said Brexit had been “substantially negative” for the UK with her estimates showing declines in EU imports and exports of “close to 20 per cent”.

Almost every country except the UK saw a trade boom in 2021, she noted. “If something hadn’t happened in January 2021, UK trade should also have grown.”*

The most sophisticated statistical modelling has been taking place at Aston Business School, where professor of economics Jun Du has found that imports to the UK from the EU have largely recovered. However, she estimates that exports to the bloc are now 26 per cent lower than they would have been without the new barriers to trade.


The effect of this can be seen most clearly in goods trade, such as food exports, where there are technical barriers and more stringent border checks. There has also been a large drop in the number of goods traded, with varieties dropping to 42,000 from 70,000 before the new rules came into effect.

According to Du, smaller companies have been hardest hit because the barriers are a more significant cost relative to the value of trade, which bodes ill for the future. “[Small companies are] not just unproductive firms, but also new firms — that’s why we are worried about future growth — when you lose that, your pipeline breaks,” she said.

“There is little dispute that trade has been damaged [by Brexit] big time,” she added.


Similar evidence is emerging in the services trade, economists said. Dhingra told MPs this month she could be even more certain there was a “stagnation” in exports because the trade data for the sector had not been distorted by changes in collection methodology in the way it had for goods trade.

So far, ministers have rejected the economic evidence. Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, said last week that he did not accept the OBR’s estimate that Brexit had caused a 4 per cent hit to the UK economy.

“There are big opportunities for us to become much more wealthy than we would otherwise have been,” he added, citing regulatory freedoms and trade deals that could be struck with other countries.

The government has not quantified these potential gains, and where it has — such as for the Australia trade deal — they were estimated to be tiny, raising output by just 0.08 per cent.

Economists say this is scant compensation for the economic losses the country has suffered so far.

“We know now that Brexit has made UK households worse off by raising the cost of living and it has made life harder for UK firms [by increasing trade barriers], and this has made the UK poorer,” said Sampson.