The Brexit Effect

What we do need is an increase in taxes

That all depends on whose taxes you want increased.

There's no point in increasing the taxes of those who can't afford to pay. If you want any sort of growth in the domestic economy people need some spare money to spend...

I certainly understand that the government can create as much money as it needs, it did that all through Covid to support the population through the pandemic.

If a credible plan for long term growth were proposed there is no reason the creation of money would be a problem, because as you have said spending precedes taxation. The UK has currently a deficit of around 100% of GDP, the US deficit is aproaching 150%

Eighty thousand million £s a year! Get your head round that.

£80,000.000,000 !!!

This is our very own OBR's assessment of the LONG TERM loss to our economy as a result of Brexit.

Well just to posit a different POV from a different expert (in the interest of balance you understand) ...

Mark Carney, sometime governor of the Bank of England, fired the opening shot in the latest push, claiming that, because of Brexit the British economy has declined from the equivalent of 90 per cent of the German to a mere 70 per cent. This has been lapped up uncritically by the Remainer media.

As it happens, while Carney’s assertion was being trumpeted, the Princeton economist professor Ashoka Mody, a leading authority on the EU economy, was speaking in Cambridge. Mild-mannered and courteous though he is (and no advocate of Brexit), he described Carney’s claims as “complete bull----”: “If anything, the British economy has performed slightly better than the German since Brexit,” he said, in terms of growth, per capita wealth, and innovation.

Yes, we heard aright. But I don’t recall it being reported on the BBC. Germany’s growth model, Mody added, is fragile, its position as Europe’s leading economy is in doubt, and it faces “a painful transition”, while eurozone debt means chronic instability.

But the Brexit bus promised us £350,000 a week extra to spend on the NHS

Then along came the pandemic, furlough payment and the war in the Ukraine affecting gas prices. Life sometimes gets in the way.

If you are going to quote verbatim from the Telegraph Urmstongran, you really need to tell us your sources.

Germany’s productivity is way higher than the U.K. and has been for years. We were doing much better whilst in EU but now the economy has taken a nose dive, and has plummeted still further thanks to the brief reign of Truss, you can’t pretend otherwise.

Germany is having a tough time just now but it’s manufacturing industry is massively stronger than the UK. Unless we improve quickly we are going to descend to the level of Italy and Greece .

ug that is interesting. Do you have a reference for those figures please?

I do know that Mody has long been anti-EU. So a definite Brexiter, as opposed to what the Telegraph maintains.

The UK economy has fallen far behind the EU since Brexit
Britain’s GDP per head has grown just 3.8 per cent since the referendum, while the EU’s has grown by 8.5 per cent.

www.newstatesman.com/chart-of-the-day/2022/06/uk-economy-fallen-behind-eu-since-brexit

Good morning Ug, I am intrigued by your comments about the 'Remainer' media. For years, until it could be ignored no longer, Brexit just wasn't mentioned, or if it was, it was to dismiss discussion and to assure us that' the will of the people' was being honoured. As to the printed media, I would not call The Telegraph, Express, Daily Mail 'Remainer Media'. In fact apart from The Guardian, the bulk of the newspapers (and their non-dom owners) were staunch supporters of Brexit. It just shows how different we can see the same events.

If we were in such a bad way economically after the pandemic why was Kwarteng able to offer so many tax cuts in his mini budget?

Apologies everyone for not quoting my source.
The article was written by Robert Tombs who is professor emeritus of French history at the University of Cambridge.

Here is Urmstongran's article if you'd like to read it:

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/10/28/project-fear-back-wrong-ever/

"The Daily Telegraph is politically conservative and has endorsed the Conservative Party at every UK general election since 1945. The personal links between the paper's editors and the leadership of the Conservative Party, along with the paper's generally right-wing stance and influence over Conservative activists, have led the paper commonly to be referred to, especially in Private Eye, as the Torygraph.
Even when Conservative support was shown to have slumped in the opinion polls and Labour gained the ascendant, the newspaper remained loyal to the Conservatives. This loyalty continued after Labour ousted the Conservatives from power by an election result in 1997, and in the face of Labour election wins in 2001 and the third successive Labour election win in 2005.

When the Barclay brothers purchased the Telegraph Group for around £665m in late June 2004, Sir David Barclay suggested that The Daily Telegraph might no longer be the "house newspaper" of the Conservatives in the future. In an interview with The Guardian he said, "Where the government are right we shall support them". The editorial board endorsed the Conservative Party in the 2005 general election.[citation needed]

During the 2014 Scottish independence referendum, the paper supported the Better Together 'No' Campaign. Alex Salmond, the former leader of the SNP, called The Telegraph "extreme" on Question Time in September 2015.

In the 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum it endorsed voting to leave the EU.

During the 2019 Conservative leadership election, The Daily Telegraph endorsed their former columnist Boris Johnson. In 2019, former columnist Graham Norton, who had left the paper in late 2018, said "about a year before I left, it took a turn" and criticised it for "toxic" political stances, namely for a piece defending US Supreme Court then-nominee Brett Kavanaugh and for being "a mouthpiece for Boris Johnson" whose columns were allegedly published with "no fact-checking at all".

It was fined £30,000 in 2015 for "sending an unsolicited email to hundreds of thousands of its subscribers, urging them to vote for the Conservatives."

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Daily_Telegraph

The Daily Telegraph is hardly an impartial source of factual information.

It maybe a less obvious source of rubbish than The Daily Express or The Daily Mail but it is still flagrant propaganda for the far right wing of UK politics.

Just look at the proprietors of these right wing propaganda papers. Who are they?

It seems that it is now generally understood that Brexit is a major factor in our economic woes alongside other factors of course.

That is the one factor that we can easily sort, simply by joining the SM and CU.

At a stroke our economy would be put into remedial care and we could look forward to a more sane future,

Whitewavemark2

It seems that it is now generally understood that Brexit is a major factor in our economic woes alongside other factors of course.

That is the one factor that we can easily sort, simply by joining the SM and CU.

At a stroke our economy would be put into remedial care and we could look forward to a more sane future,

It seems that it is now generally understood that Brexit is a major factor in our economic woes alongside other factors of course.

It might be generally understood but until it is generally accepted we won't be joining the SM / CU any time soon. I mean - accepted by sufficient numbers of people.

IMO, the pandemic and global energy price hikes plus the war in Ukraine, will continue to be the scapegoats for the failures of Brexit.

During the initial stages of the pandemic when we started to see its effect on other countries, Boris Johnson had the option to delay the negotiations in order to devote time to deal with it. He refused. If he'd not - he would've lost the support of too many Brexit voters who made it quite clear that getting Brexit 'done' was their priority. It is those individuals that have to be persuaded that Brexit is a huge driver in our current economic misery. And frankly, I don't think they will ever agree. These are the mainstay of the current Tory government and it is not going to do anything - like talking about joining the SM - to upset the fine balance in their favour.

It doesn't matter how many former Brexiteers admit it was an economic failure or how many economists give facts and figures, they will either be ignored or brushed off as 'leftie Remoaners' (though I'm always puzzled why Leave voters think all moany Remoaners are left-wing because clearly they aren't!).

The Tory government is dedicated to its own survival, and I think that means it has to support Brexit ideology - regardless, so that is what it will do.

I am of the opinion that the line of sufficient people willing to give the SM/CU consideration has been crossed.

The main issue is of course the right wing media.

How do we deal with that?

I haven’t a clue.

The only things we have to show for Brexit are economic and political chaos. Trade has declined massively along with our international reputation. This is a summary of an article from the Daily Telegraph no less, hardly a remoaner paper.

Whitewavemark2

I am of the opinion that the line of sufficient people willing to give the SM/CU consideration has been crossed.

The main issue is of course the right wing media.

How do we deal with that?

I haven’t a clue.

Any kind of arrangement that means we have to accept EU rules is off the table at present, if/when Labour wins the next GE that may well change.

There is no way a tight wing dominated Tory party is going to accept EU regulation.

Normandygirl
^"Sadly however, along came the pandemic, lockdowns, eye watering furlough payments and distribution of effective vaccines."

As it did for the EU and the world, so can you explain why the UK is now doing so much worse than any other advanced European and world economies?^

Because only we had Liz Truss???

CatsCatsCats

Normandygirl
^"Sadly however, along came the pandemic, lockdowns, eye watering furlough payments and distribution of effective vaccines."

As it did for the EU and the world, so can you explain why the UK is now doing so much worse than any other advanced European and world economies?^

Because only we had Liz Truss???

Yes only we had Truss but that catastrophe has passed, now it’s much more the bleak forecast by the BoE that is driving interest rates up

the bleak forecast by the BoE that is driving interest rates up

You've got that the wrong way round, Katie. It's the interest rates that are the cause of the bleak forecast.
The BoE have got a bloody nerve, I think.

MaizieD

^the bleak forecast by the BoE that is driving interest rates up^

You've got that the wrong way round, Katie. It's the interest rates that are the cause of the bleak forecast.
The BoE have got a bloody nerve, I think.

Because inflation is caused mainly by high food and fuel prices which consumer have to pay, I think interest rises are unjustified, further increasing the pressure.
If it was run away wage rises maybe it would be reasonable, now we wait on tax rises later this month.