Since the Brexit vote relatively little has happened economically. The tills have continued ringing and people have continued to draw their incomes and pay their bills. If anything, it has been a few months that have been pretty good for most people's personal prosperity and there haven't been too many obvious Brexit losers yet. The pro-Brexit press, which is most of the press, haven't failed to point these things out and gleefully portray remainers as not only wrong in general but wrong in particular.
But there are plenty of ominous signs just below the surface that leaving the economic arrangements we have had for the last 40 years is not going to develop to our advantage. Support for Brexit is waning a little - it is unlikely that they'd win a repeat referendum if held today - but there are still a lot of people around who still think it is a good idea.
One idea that might cross the mind of a determined remainer is that if only the bad consequences could become manifest a bit quicker then that might accelerate the process of changing people's minds and we might even now be able to put a halt to the project.
I don't think this will be the case. I have a feeling that once bad news starts arriving the large pro-Brexit minority will not melt away. It certainly won't recant. In fact, it is more likely to double down and become even more vociferous in its opposition to the EU.
There are two well known effects at play here. Few people are willing to accept any loss of face if they don't have to. Economics is a vague enough science that just about anything can be explained in a way that fits you want it to fit. You think these job losses are bad? Have a look at unemployment rates in Greece! Fall in the pound? It was overvalued anyway to keep the Germans happy. We wouldn't have had this problem if we had never joined in the first place. Engineering companies investing in Spain and Poland? A new call centre opened in Liverpool yesterday. As Mark Twain put it "It's easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled."
Working with this is the sunk cost fallacy. Having put so much effort into Brexit we have to push on and get the benefits of it otherwise all those loses will be meaningless. This is a really tough frame of mind to overcome. Just 100 years ago it was obvious that there was no benefit that would possibly come from the First World War that would justify further loss of life. And yet all the big battles of 1916 that we have been commemorating this year went ahead anyway. Having spent so much blood and treasure, it was impossible to halt it.
So the best way to win over people who currently support Brexit isn't to go on about the potential downside. It isn't even to point out what has already gone wrong. It makes much more psychological sense to suggest that far from being a big deal it is actually not that important an issue. Yes we could leave the EU. But what difference would it really make? It doesn't cost that much when you compare it to the size of the economy. It is really handy being able to travel freely. And the longer we stay out of it, the harder it will be to get back in.
So I think lowering the temperature of the debate is the best way to get it back into perspective and for good sense to prevail. The worst the Brexit news, the harder that is going to be.
No comments:
Post a Comment