A Positive Case For Brexit

Here's a tip for Brexiters.  If you really want to annoy remainers, don't insult them.  All that does is confirm the idea that Brexit is simply a howl of rage against nothing in particular by people who just love complaining.  Negative arguments are powerful because they are emotional and full of energy and conviction.  When they are also strong arguments they are unbeatable.  But directed against people who don't buy the original premise, they just sound stupid and they make the person putting them forward appear unhinged.

Will The Brexit Ship Ever Leave The Port?

Will The Brexit Ship Ever Leave Port

There hasn't been much Brexit news or polling over the last couple of days and it remains something that nobody I meet in real life brings up as a subject of conversation.  But I think the obstacles in the way of a smooth transition out of the EU have risen somewhat.  The official process still hasn't started and isn't due to start for another 5 months.  We are in a sort of phoney war.  But the dispositions are being taken up, and the Nissan story is the most illuminating.

Brexit By Election? Hardly

Brexit was popular with the old, the uneducated and the unemployed.  It failed to appeal to the wealthy, the educated or people in full time employment.  Basically if you own stuff, know stuff or do stuff then Brexit is not for you.  This is a bit of a problem if you want to build a national consensus against Brexit.  The kind of arguments that make sense for one group aren't going to apply to another.  Job losses?  We don't have jobs.  Lower economic growth?  We are broke already.  Opportunities to work abroad?  We don't even fancy going on holiday abroad.

The Aussies Don't Want To Talk To The UK About Trade

Making decisions is tough, and even when you get them right it is easy to delude yourself about how clever you were.  I was pretty sure that leaving the EU was a bad idea when I voted to stay in three months ago.  Events since have confirmed it was the better of the two options.  But if I am honest I was much to blasé about it and hadn't fully considered all the possible downsides.

Language Matters

There was a widely reported story that the EU's Brexit negotiator was going to insist on carrying out the negotiations over the departure of the UK in French.  As with so much to do with the EU, this was made up in Fleet Street.  But the reason it was a big story is that language matters.  Bismarck, who knew a thing or two about power, once said that the most significant development in the nineteenth century was that English became the dominant language of the North American continent.  He may well have said it through gritted teeth.

Is The Brexit Project Failing?

I didn't start out as particularly pro-Europe.  I was 12 when we joined and it all seemed like a good idea at the time.  There was a debate about it but it never really got me very excited one way or the other.  By 1983 when Labour ran on a programme of leaving the EU it struck me not so much wrong as anachronistic.  I was not at all sure it was a good idea, but it didn't seem all that big a deal.  I certainly didn't think through the implications.  After that Labour came back round to being pro-Europe and I thought it was back off the table for good.  Even when UKIP became prominent it didn't seem to me that leaving the EU was actually conceivable.  Apart from their headline policy I quite liked UKIP at first.  I thought the consensus at Westminster could do with a bit of a shake up.

A Trade Deal With Canada On Day One Of Brexit

One of the many groundless accusations thrown at the EU during the referendum campaign was that the EU is undemocratic and unaccountable.  This always struck me as the feeblest of the arguments against.  The EU certainly is democratic enough when compared to other political systems around the world, but it bears up particularly well in comparison to the UK.  If you don't like the European Commission you should really hate the House of Lords.

Brexit Resurrects Industrial Strategy

One of the things that I am struck by in the months following Brexit is just how bad I am at predicting the consequences.  I am not very good at finding articles written by other people who are good at predicting the consequences either.  For now I am applying Occam's Razor and assuming that nobody is clever enough to guess what is going to happen next.   This was brought home this morning by picking up a report that Nissan are about to announce a big investment in their plant in Sunderland.  Losing this kind of investment has been a big worry to me, and others, since the vote.  So it is good news that it is going ahead.  I don't doubt that the pro-Brexit voices will soon be talking this up as an example of how the UK is going to do better outside the EU than it ever did inside.  They may well be right, but as always there is a bit more to the story.

Theresa May Keeping The Door Open

One of the things I started this blog for was to record what people were saying in real life about Brexit.  My observation is that unlike during the campaign, nobody is talking about it offline.  (People online are mainly talking to other people who agree with them, but that's another story.)  This is a little surprising given that it is in the news a lot and I can't be the only one for whom it is something that is going to have a direct effect on my life and business.

Never Mind Hard Brexit, Here Are Hard Numbers On Why People Voted Out

The University of Warwick has come up with the first detailed analysis of the reasons why people voted as they did in the EU referendum.  As such it is an important document in its own right since all future work will inevitably reference it - and either confirm or challenge its conclusions.  But for those of us who have been baffled by developments this year and are struggling to understand what has happened to our country it is a useful insight into what actually happened.

Is Opinion Beginning To Shift Against Brexit?

The day after the Brexit vote there were several news articles on the television coverage of people who regretted voting to leave the EU.  It was balanced by other articles interviewing pleased leavers, but it was enough to make me wonder if the whole thing was going to descend into a farce.  It fitted in with the obvious shock on the part of the leave leaders, particularly Boris Johnson and Michael Gove who looked anything but delighted by the outcome.

How Will Britain Get Back In the EU?

I am sure that the UK will be back in the EU at some point in the future. It simply defies logic that a country so integral to European history should be outside of it.  Whether this will come about because the whole Brexit project simply falls apart, or if we have a government elected on a promise of a return or if some unexpected event like a war against Russia simply makes it unavoidable is hard to say.  But there is one intriguing possibility that was opened up by a proposal that has just come out.

Marmite Means Marmite

The Order Order blog is great fun if, like me, you enjoy scurrilous gossip.  It is well written and very well informed about the shenanigans behind British politics.  It is run by a guy called Paul Staines under the name Guido Fawkes.  It is quite a suitable name.  The original Guido was a violent counter revolutionary devoted to overthrowing the Reformation backing English parliament.  The Order Order blog has a rather similar political line basically being anti nearly everything.  It's a good line to take for a satyrical take on things because finding fault and exposing folly is sight more entertaining than proposing solutions and praising virtue.

Racism And Brexit - Why Racists Should Oppose Brexit

I follow a number of pro-Brexit forums.  It is always interesting to read a range of opinions especially those you aren't in sympathy with.  And who knows, there might be some killer reason for supporting Brexit that I haven't thought of.

As with all things that are open to anyone to contribute to, you never know what will pop up.  For example someone this morning simply posted a declaration that they were racist.  They didn't say anything offensive, they just stated it in plain language.  Accusing other people of racism is controversial, but it is important not to let people sneak racism into public dialogue in disguise. On the other hand, if someone wants to claim to be one I can't see why they should be silenced.

Nonetheless the moderators quickly removed it.  This could have been justified on the basis that it was off topic.  But I imagine that quite apart from that they didn't really want anyone mixing up racism and leaving the EU.  Leavers in general, and UKIP in particular, have been bedevilled by accusations of racism.  This is something they have always denied whenever they got a chance.  I don't think it is true, but accusations have a habit of sticking no matter how unjustified.  You can see why they reached for the delete button.

Falling Pound - The Grind Begins

It's not something that everybody notices every day, but it is something that has a big impact nonetheless.  I am already noticing the prices are moving up for some of the things I buy from abroad.  But I have feeling I am really going to feel it when I next travel abroad.  But the indirect effects are the big ones.  We are now considerably poorer than we used to be as a nation.  On paper we are already behind France and not much ahead of California.  This is all very real.  

Majority In Work Voted Remain. Working Classes Versus Smirking Classes?

"A majority of those working full-time or part-time voted to remain in the EU; most of those not working voted to leave. More than half of those retired on a private pension voted to leave, as did two thirds of those retired on a state pension."

Will Brexit Affect The Pound In Your Pocket?

In 1967 Harold Wilson devalued the pound by 14%.  This was a big shock to the system, and he felt obliged to make a special television appearance to explain what was happening. He tried to minimise the  importance of the event by explaining that this didn't affect the pound in your pocket. The phrase was a memorable one and would haunt him for the rest of his career.  The plain fact was that it did indeed affect the pound in your pocket. It was now worth 14% less.



Economics is not an exact science.  It isn't really a science at all.  Just what happens when a currency falls in value isn't easy to predict. Very roughly it is a bit like a sale in a shop.  You knock down your prices which attracts some previously reluctant customers.  But you also cut your margins to all your customers - so you become less profitable.  Whether the extra custom is worth the reduced value of the sales you make is hard to tell.  Retailers who try to discount their way out of a tricky situation may or may not succeed.  It might be part of a long term strategy of course.  This might do better but even here there are no guarantees.