All back to Brexit

Last week the Stanford University Institute of Policy Research (SIEPR) published a report on the effects of Brexit, in the run up to the ten year anniversary of the referendum.

It makes grim reading. "This paper examines the impact of the UK's decision to leave the European Union (Brexit) in 2016. Using almost a decade of data since the referendum, we combine simulations based on macro data with estimates derived from micro data collected through our Decision Maker Panel survey. These estimates suggest that by 2025, Brexit had reduced UK GDP by 6% to 8%, with the impact accumulating gradually over time. We estimate that investment was reduced by between 12% and 18%, employment by 3% to 4% and productivity by 3% to 4%. These large negative impacts reflect a combination of elevated uncertainty, reduced demand, diverted management time, and increased misallocation of resources from a protracted Brexit process. Comparing these with contemporary forecasts – providing a rare macro example to complement the burgeoning micro- literature of social science predictions – shows that these forecasts were accurate over a 5-year horizon, but they underestimated the impact over a decade. "

The UK is overdue a long hard conversation with itself regarding the efects of Brexit.

This is difficult at the drivers behind Brexit, Farage, etc, and the news papers and their owners would rather we didn't.

They would rather see the country be impoverished and be able to blame some black fellers in a boat crossing the English Channel than admit they were wrong.

If you do get them to talk about why 60% or the population thinks Brexit failed, they will say that the "blob" has Sabotaged Brexit, or that Brexit wasn'r done properly, without explaining what doing Brexit properly might mean.

The two main political parties are commited to "making Brexit work", this despite according to the report, the Treasury is some £40 billion short because of Brexit.

Can we not reverse Brexit? Or join the SM and/or CU?

First there would have to be political agreement that this is the case. Neither Labour or the Conservatives want to reverse Brexit, we can assume that Farage's "party" doesn't either.

And without that cross-party agreement, the EU wouldn't even begin to think about letting the UK back in. There is a process that any prospective nation needs to follow: Article 49, and would mean accepting the Euro. And would be on much worse terms than when we left.

The current Government is concerned with growth above all else, and yet being outside the EU there is a an almost flatlining of GDP, a continued drop in inward investment, and an incasingly aggressive attitude by the two main parties to immigrants.

We have a long way to go, perhaps a path the UK will never go down, but one thing is sure, whatever the EU agrees with the UK, the UK or any third country will never get as good a deal as a member state would, as this would indermine the EU as a concept.