Brexit Penny Dropping?

[RecklessAbandon]

49 minutes ago, Cambon said:

Lets just remember for a minute which party was in power in 2008! 
More realistically, none of the other figures agree with the low growth statement. 
Lies, damn lies and statistics. 
The true economic pointers never lie.

Would it of mattered whether it was a Tory or Labour government in 2008?  It was a global financial crash, and has been evidenced by the mishandling of a bunch of crisis situations, the Tories don't have the best track record of steering the correct course. 

[Cambon]

38 minutes ago, RecklessAbandon said:

Would it of mattered whether it was a Tory or Labour government in 2008?  It was a global financial crash, and has been evidenced by the mishandling of a bunch of crisis situations, the Tories don't have the best track record of steering the correct course. 

The issue in the uk came when gordon brown lied to RBS and Lloyds about the level of debt they agreed to bail out fro Algamene Bank. Once they had signed on the dotted line, the game was over. 

[woolley]

On 6/20/2024 at 2:44 PM, RecklessAbandon said:

Yes, it has highlighted that the UK being out of the EU is of detriment to them and they are upping sticks in increasingly higher numbers since 2017.

So if Brexit is so bad for the rich, why do Europhiles keep telling us it only benefits the rich and was arranged for their convenience? As I said, you can't have it both ways.

[woolley]

23 hours ago, P.K. said:

Investment levels in the UK remain among the worst of the world's richest nations and unless they improve it is hard to see how the economy will grow, a think tank has said.

The UK currently was not just bottom of the G7 investment table with investment at 18.3% of national income, but "significantly" behind the next worst performer - the US at 21.2%.

"The UK's dire productivity performance since the great financial crisis of 2008 is, to a large extent, the single biggest driver of our dire living standards," the IPPR said.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cl44edly2ryo

2008? Brexit was voted in 2016, and because of the machinations of the 2017 rogue Parliament, it didn't take effect until 2021. You don't have a point.

[woolley]

8 hours ago, Cambon said:

The issue in the uk came when gordon brown lied to RBS and Lloyds about the level of debt they agreed to bail out fro Algamene Bank. Once they had signed on the dotted line, the game was over. 

Lost several shirts in the RBS crash, but never heard of this. As far as I know, Brown and Darling were confronted at some ungodly hour of the night and told that if they didn't come up with the dough, the cash machines wouldn't be working in the morning. Which lie of Brown's are you referring too? There was a massive lack of oversight, and within the bank and among its advisers, snouts were so far in the trough that they didn't notice it heading over the cliff.

[P.K.]

5 minutes ago, woolley said:

2008? Brexit was voted in 2016, and because of the machinations of the 2017 rogue Parliament, it didn't take effect until 2021. You don't have a point.

I just thought I would throw it into the mix after reading about Liz Truss trying to re-invent herself for the GE. You may recall that her "growth" non-budget made the markets show what a load of brexit wank "taking back control" was...

It also made me laugh, a lot, that she is trying to get re-elected in quite a rural constituency! If the local farmers figure out how much "sovrinty" Truss signed away in her "negative benefit to the UK" trade deals she signed with Oz and NZ then it might just turn her safe seat into a marginal..

[P.K.]

23 hours ago, Cambon said:

Lets just remember for a minute which party was in power in 2008! 
More realistically, none of the other figures agree with the low growth statement. 
Lies, damn lies and statistics. 
The true economic pointers never lie.

@Cambon

So in your opinion what are the "true economic pointers" because I thought the UK was the fifth richest country in the world but now it seems we have slipped to sixth place?

Depending on where you look of course...

[Cambon]

19 hours ago, woolley said:

Lost several shirts in the RBS crash, but never heard of this. As far as I know, Brown and Darling were confronted at some ungodly hour of the night and told that if they didn't come up with the dough, the cash machines wouldn't be working in the morning. Which lie of Brown's are you referring too? There was a massive lack of oversight, and within the bank and among its advisers, snouts were so far in the trough that they didn't notice it heading over the cliff.

I will reply to this but it will take me a bit of time to try to sort the timeline out. One piece of information will be almost impossible to corroborate. Leave it with me. 

[Cambon]

5 hours ago, P.K. said:

@Cambon

So in your opinion what are the "true economic pointers" because I thought the UK was the fifth richest country in the world but now it seems we have slipped to sixth place?

Depending on where you look of course...

Fifth, sixth, who cares? It will be eighth or tenth by the end of the year. I have already given you the economic pointers. 

[The Voice of Reason]

Yes this is from the Telegraph but if the Remoaners can flood these pages with shitty X ( twitter) videos I make no apologies. There is an awful lot in here that is so true.

Nobody is confronting the great Remainer lie about Brexit

It’s now eight years since the referendum, and Leave backers aren’t doing enough to counter pro-EU propaganda

DAVID FROST21 June 2024 • 6:30pm

 

 

Eight years ago on Sunday, we went to vote in the Brexit referendum. Let’s not forget that most of our rulers never wanted it in the first place. It only happened because of the campaigning of Nigel Farage and Ukip and the determination of a bunch of Tory MPs like Sir Bill Cash. It became the largest act of democracy, and indeed the largest vote for anything, in British history. 

Four years later, through a supreme effort, and in the teeth of the opposition of the anti-democrats and the blockers – including Sir Keir Starmer and most of the current Labour leadership – the Conservative Party, Boris Johnson and I smashed through the barriers and delivered the referendum result. 

We went on to sign the largest, widest, and deepest trade and co-operation agreement anywhere. We made Britain a free and independent country once again. 

Where has that spirit of hope and optimism gone? In part, of course, it dissipated amid the Covid pandemic and the shock of the Ukraine war. 

But it’s not just that. Those who never wanted to leave the EU have taken every opportunity, seized on every random economic figure, to tell us that Brexit was an irresponsible populist mistake. And since Boris’s departure, there has been no real counter-argument from the Government. 

It’s not surprising so many believe – despite the actual evidence – that somehow “Brexit is failing”. Yet it really isn’t so. 

Obviously any change on the scale of leaving the EU entails both costs and benefits. Assessing that trade-off is not just about economics and trade, but also about intangibles like control and national democracy, upon which free Western countries have traditionally put a high value. 

So there will always be room for debate. But one thing we can be sure of is that the catastrophising of Project Fear was simply wrong. We accomplished the biggest change in this country’s economic and political model for 50 years, and you can barely see it in the figures. 

The likely small hit from disentangling ourselves from the single market and customs union isn’t even visible in the charts. The disasters predicted by so many have simply not happened. So when the critics got so much wrong before, why should we believe them now? 

Yet you still hear many who should know better, like the Office for Budget Responsibility, and many who don’t, like the actor Brian Cox on the BBC last weekend, claiming that Brexit is shrinking our GDP by 4 per cent. But this figure is not a fact: it is a prediction, a very unsafe one, made several years back, about the supposed drag on our GDP sometime in the next decade. 

And the prediction just does not reflect reality. The truth is that, since we left the EU’s economic area at the end of 2020, our hourly productivity has grown faster than the eurozone’s and, according to the OECD, our overall economy has grown faster than that of France or Germany. There is every reason to think that both of these trends will continue. 
Similarly, don’t believe the anti-Brexit hype about our trade performance. We are actually in the middle of a services trade boom, one unpredicted by the gloomy anti-Brexit economists. 

Moreover, as the economist Catherine McBride has been repeatedly pointing out for the Briefings for Britain group, our goods exports to the EU and the rest of the world have performed roughly equally, and our goods imports from the EU have actually gone up faster than those from elsewhere, neither of which suggests that EU trade barriers are at the root of any difficulties we have. 

So why do so many voters feel they aren’t getting what they hoped for from Brexit? One answer is that our problems are deep-rooted: housing and planning, unreformed public services, tax and spend at the highest-ever levels, the crackpot pursuit of renewables, and an economy that has got hooked on the sugar rushes of low-skill immigration and zero interest rates. Add to all this the pandemic, with its £400 billion debt, a shock which is going to take a long time to work through, and plainly the last few years would have been difficult come what may.

The other reason is that we have not delivered on our promises. We pledged to cut immigration and it has not happened. Quite apart from the negative direct effects, this failure has revealed just how much the levers of control are outside the government’s hands and how ineffective the British state really is. 

Leaving the EU is the necessary condition for solving these problems. It doesn’t fix them in itself. We, the British people, still have to do that for ourselves. What Brexit does do – or should do, for the job is not entirely complete – is give us back control, the ability to govern our country in our own interests and in a way that suits us. 

That is about changing the laws that we inherited from the EU. It’s about taking on the European Convention on Human Rights. And it is also about ending the passivity of the last couple of decades, in which too much of the British establishment seemed to prefer investing in our minority, non-controlling, share in the EU than in governing Britain in the interests of the British people. 

Yes, we should have changed more and more quickly. But, again despite what you will hear from many, getting out of the EU has already made a big difference. 

First of all, we have our democracy back. Here, we can change everything at elections. EU countries can’t. They can change their leaders but can only change the policies if they can persuade everyone else to agree. 

We choose our governments ourselves, but the EU’s miscellaneous job-lot of presidents – including seemingly one who was forced to resign from his own government due to a corruption scandal – is currently being chosen in backrooms, divvied up among political groupings, and rubber-stamped by its parliament. Nor do we have to pay £10-12 billion a year net into the EU each year, a sum that would be a lot higher by now as the bloc has expanded its budgets and borrowing since we left. 

We have got all the EU’s old trade deals and several new ones of our own, too, notably the huge trans-Pacific Partnership, which gives us free trade with the fastest growing economies in the world. We have cut our own tariffs, making prices cheaper in the shops – impossible within the EU.

We have begun to free up our financial services sector again to give back the City some of its old dynamism. We have our own flexible subsidy regime and we can reduce taxes and regulation within our new freeports.

We can change our own VAT rates, at least within Great Britain. We have a better-tailored farming support scheme, new procurement rules, greater freedom in foreign policy, streamlined trade processes, and an increase in fisheries quotas before we take back full control of our waters in two years’ time.

 

You can find more unsung successes of Brexit in a report launched today, setting out 50 Brexit benefits, at globalbritain.co.uk. None of them is a silver bullet. 

We could do more – in labour markets, competition policy, distancing ourselves from the excesses of net zero, and in dealing with the drag on reform created by the deeply unsatisfactory Windsor Framework in Northern Ireland. But that is not an argument for giving up and going back to the starting point.

 

So when people say Brexit is failing, don’t listen. Point to the evidence, and be proud of what we did to make our country free and independent once again. And vote wisely on July 4.

 

Edited June 22 by The Voice of Reason

[La Colombe]

 

[La Colombe]

Quite funny really that Frosty (who, don't forget, was actually a pre-referendum ardent remainer) is now urging the country to be proud of quitting the EU and should recognise all the wonders it has delivered. However, the country respectively isn't and doesn't. He knows it. And, as one of the architects, that scares him. History won't be kind to him. 

[La Colombe]

 

[P.K.]

23 hours ago, Cambon said:

Fifth, sixth, who cares? It will be eighth or tenth by the end of the year. I have already given you the economic pointers. 

@Cambon

All you ever mention is the FTSE

Slow growth, high debt - troubled UK economy awaits election winners

LONDON, April 19 (Reuters) - Britain's national election, expected later this year, will take place against a backdrop of persistently slow economic growth, high public debt and little room to increase spending for whoever wins power unless they raise taxes.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak promises voters that a recovery from a cost-of-living crisis is underway while the opposition Labour Party, which is far ahead in opinion polls, accuses his ruling Conservatives of overseeing 14 years of economic failure.

Below is a summary of some of the challenges facing the world's sixth-biggest economy which appears to be emerging from a shallow recession but is still feeling the aftershocks of Brexit, the COVID pandemic and the energy price surge of 2022.

SLOW GROWTH

Britain's economy has been sluggish since 2010, when the Conservatives entered government under former leader David Cameron, shortly after the 2007-09 global financial crisis.

What growth there has been recently has been helped by the impact of high flows of migration. Gross domestic product per person has not increased since early 2022.

Finance minister Jeremy Hunt points to data that shows Britain's economy as a whole grew faster than Germany, France and Italy since 2010, albeit marginally.

But since the start of the coronavirus pandemic in early 2020, Britain's economic performance has been the weakest among the Group of Seven (G7) economies with the exception of Germany.

WEAK PRODUCTIVITY

A big brake on the economy over the past 14 years has been Britain's weak productivity growth.

Output per hour worked in similar countries has also increased only slowly since the global financial crisis. But low levels of business investment, Brexit barriers to trade, low public investment and problems with skills training have been cited as factors that have left Britain lagging its peers.

In 2022, British business investment was slightly lower than its level in 2016, a contrast with other G7 economies that experienced a 14% average increase during the period.

Both the main political parties are promising to improve productivity, with the Conservatives focusing on tax incentives for business investment announced by the government last year and Labour by promising to invest more in green technology.

Both the main political parties are promising to improve productivity, with the Conservatives focusing on tax incentives for business investment announced by the government last year and Labour by promising to invest more in green technology.

HIT TO INCOMES

The poor productivity performance has contributed to British wages virtually flat-lining since the 2007-09 financial crisis when adjusted for inflation. Real household disposable income is on course to fall between one British national election and the next for the first time since at least the 1950s.

Over the past 20 years, inflation-adjusted wage growth for British workers has lagged behind that of most other G7 nations.

Middle-income people in Britain are 20% poorer than their peers in Germany and 9% poorer than those in France, according to a report published in December by the Resolution Foundation, the Centre for Economic Performance and the Nuffield Foundation.

  PUBLIC SPENDING SQUEEZE AHEAD

Public spending surged in 2020 as the government responded to the COVID pandemic. It was also pushed up by subsidies to protect the economy from the surge in energy prices triggered by Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

While higher as a share of economic output than in the United States, public spending in Britain is lower than in Germany and France, contributing to the strain on services such as health and education.

The current government's fiscal plans rely on further cuts for many public services in the years ahead in order to make its recent tax cuts fit within its debt promises. Many budget experts say those spending cuts look unrealistic, given the strains already on public services.

Reuters Graphics  

FOCUS ON TAX TAKE

Britain's tax burden has risen to its highest since World War Two but it remains lower than in other big European nations.

Sunak, under fire from within his Conservative Party over the size of the tax burden, has said he wants to build on recent cuts to national insurance rates while Labour says it will not raise the main rates of taxation. Those positions raise questions about how the next government can meet the challenges of improving public services and stabilising public finances.

Reuters Graphics
 

HIGH DEBT LEVELS

Britain's public debt levels, like those of many other countries, rocketed due to the massive costs of the COVID pandemic and the energy price surge. Projections from the International Monetary Fund show it will keep on rising as a share of GDP.

The IMF said this week that Britain, the United States, Italy and China "critically need to take policy action to address fundamental imbalances between spending and revenues".

The Conservatives and Labour both promise to ensure that official forecasts show the debt burden falling at the end of a rolling five-year period - albeit using a slightly different measure to the IMF. Achieving lower debt levels looks tough given demands for more spending and the parties' tax promises.

INACTIVITY PROBLEM

One way of giving the economy a growth boost, and getting more money flowing into the government's coffers, would be to tackle the high number of people who are not working or looking for work in Britain. The country is the only one in the G7 where the share of working-age people outside the workforce remains higher than before the pandemic, slowing economic growth and boosting inflation.

But don't worry. The FTSE says everything's fine...

[Cambon]

3 hours ago, P.K. said:

@Cambon

All you ever mention is the FTSE

Slow growth, high debt - troubled UK economy awaits election winners

LONDON, April 19 (Reuters) - Britain's national election, expected later this year, will take place against a backdrop of persistently slow economic growth, high public debt and little room to increase spending for whoever wins power unless they raise taxes.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak promises voters that a recovery from a cost-of-living crisis is underway while the opposition Labour Party, which is far ahead in opinion polls, accuses his ruling Conservatives of overseeing 14 years of economic failure.

Below is a summary of some of the challenges facing the world's sixth-biggest economy which appears to be emerging from a shallow recession but is still feeling the aftershocks of Brexit, the COVID pandemic and the energy price surge of 2022.

SLOW GROWTH

Britain's economy has been sluggish since 2010, when the Conservatives entered government under former leader David Cameron, shortly after the 2007-09 global financial crisis.

What growth there has been recently has been helped by the impact of high flows of migration. Gross domestic product per person has not increased since early 2022.

Finance minister Jeremy Hunt points to data that shows Britain's economy as a whole grew faster than Germany, France and Italy since 2010, albeit marginally.

But since the start of the coronavirus pandemic in early 2020, Britain's economic performance has been the weakest among the Group of Seven (G7) economies with the exception of Germany.

WEAK PRODUCTIVITY

A big brake on the economy over the past 14 years has been Britain's weak productivity growth.

Output per hour worked in similar countries has also increased only slowly since the global financial crisis. But low levels of business investment, Brexit barriers to trade, low public investment and problems with skills training have been cited as factors that have left Britain lagging its peers.

In 2022, British business investment was slightly lower than its level in 2016, a contrast with other G7 economies that experienced a 14% average increase during the period.

Both the main political parties are promising to improve productivity, with the Conservatives focusing on tax incentives for business investment announced by the government last year and Labour by promising to invest more in green technology.

Both the main political parties are promising to improve productivity, with the Conservatives focusing on tax incentives for business investment announced by the government last year and Labour by promising to invest more in green technology.

HIT TO INCOMES

The poor productivity performance has contributed to British wages virtually flat-lining since the 2007-09 financial crisis when adjusted for inflation. Real household disposable income is on course to fall between one British national election and the next for the first time since at least the 1950s.

Over the past 20 years, inflation-adjusted wage growth for British workers has lagged behind that of most other G7 nations.

Middle-income people in Britain are 20% poorer than their peers in Germany and 9% poorer than those in France, according to a report published in December by the Resolution Foundation, the Centre for Economic Performance and the Nuffield Foundation.

  PUBLIC SPENDING SQUEEZE AHEAD

Public spending surged in 2020 as the government responded to the COVID pandemic. It was also pushed up by subsidies to protect the economy from the surge in energy prices triggered by Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

While higher as a share of economic output than in the United States, public spending in Britain is lower than in Germany and France, contributing to the strain on services such as health and education.

The current government's fiscal plans rely on further cuts for many public services in the years ahead in order to make its recent tax cuts fit within its debt promises. Many budget experts say those spending cuts look unrealistic, given the strains already on public services.

Reuters Graphics  

FOCUS ON TAX TAKE

Britain's tax burden has risen to its highest since World War Two but it remains lower than in other big European nations.

Sunak, under fire from within his Conservative Party over the size of the tax burden, has said he wants to build on recent cuts to national insurance rates while Labour says it will not raise the main rates of taxation. Those positions raise questions about how the next government can meet the challenges of improving public services and stabilising public finances.

Reuters Graphics
 

HIGH DEBT LEVELS

Britain's public debt levels, like those of many other countries, rocketed due to the massive costs of the COVID pandemic and the energy price surge. Projections from the International Monetary Fund show it will keep on rising as a share of GDP.

The IMF said this week that Britain, the United States, Italy and China "critically need to take policy action to address fundamental imbalances between spending and revenues".

The Conservatives and Labour both promise to ensure that official forecasts show the debt burden falling at the end of a rolling five-year period - albeit using a slightly different measure to the IMF. Achieving lower debt levels looks tough given demands for more spending and the parties' tax promises.

INACTIVITY PROBLEM

One way of giving the economy a growth boost, and getting more money flowing into the government's coffers, would be to tackle the high number of people who are not working or looking for work in Britain. The country is the only one in the G7 where the share of working-age people outside the workforce remains higher than before the pandemic, slowing economic growth and boosting inflation.

But don't worry. The FTSE says everything's fine...

You did actually read it all, didn’t you? The headlines say uk is doing badly but the text sections basically say otherwise. The text sections say all the G20 countries are in trouble one way or the other, especially since the pandemic. Taxes will have to go up. I suspect the cut in NI was to ensure labour have to restore it.