Best Of

FPT:

https://x.com/pippacrerar/status/1997296467195617672

Informal discussions have taken place inside No 10 on rejoining customs union as quickest way to boost growth

What do they know about growth? They spent the best part of a year talking down the economy and were surprised that confidence collapsed.

If they do it, the aim wouldn't really be "to boost growth" but to polarise the electorate and try to build a coalition based winning as many of the 48% as possible.

They probably will. As I've said before, many times, Starmer was a Tedious Tactical Triangulator in opposition and he's now a Tedious Tactical Triangulator in office.

He will end up neither trusted nor respected, so it might not even work no matter what he does.

Spare us the insulting language, Casino.

It's time you recognised that Brexiteers and their project are deeply unpopular. You shat the bed for all of us. Time to be a little less dismissive of those who want to change the sheets.

I don't read any insulting language in Casino's post - am I missing something?

I read his post simply as a rather cynical one that Starmer may well benefit from a tack towards the EU, despite being rather disliked, but that he might be so disliked by that point that people won't be willing to hold their noses.

I for one would put up with a pretty crap next few years policy-wise if a closer economic and security relationship with the EU was on the ballot next election.

Yes, some people have never made their peace with the result, and the push for Rejoin—in whatever packaging—still owes as much to wounded pride as to policy. For a certain set, the Leave vote wasn’t just wrong; it was an affront to the natural order in which they are always ‘right.’ Losing to people they openly despise is something they still haven’t processed. The irony is that the pomposity and arrogance that turns so many off remains entirely invisible to the because, in their minds, ‘the facts’ excuse everything - in fact, they provide an excuse for it. That in turn drives a vociferous reaction.

But the politics of 2025 aren’t the politics of 2015. That world isn’t coming back. A pro-EU tilt might help Starmer consolidate his core vote, but it risks bleeding plenty of Reform-facing marginals.

He’d shore up his presence in Parliament, but it’s not a route to another majority.

I can't speak for others but I think you do your opponents a disservice by referring to wounded pride.

Amongst those I spend time with (mostly teachers, and most were on the Remain side) Brexit doesn't really get talked about any more.

But I do think you are putting blinkers on if you only talk about pomposity and arrogance and discount the much more rational view that we have harmed ourselves economically and in relation to our security by divorcing from Europe just at the moment when other reliable global partners have imploded.

As a Remainer I dread the idea of British politics being consumed by Brexit again, and I still think there's a lot that can be done in Britain to help the British economy.

However, the evidence is beginning to stack up that isolating the British economy from the single market is having a cumulative and growing impact that needs to be addressed in one way or another.

But I think it's right to say that Starmer is likely to be more motivated by political positioning than economics. If he was motivated by economics there's a lot he could do that would be less contentious.

It isn't at all. It's not even close to being one of our main problems, as GDP growth charts show since 2008.

It's a big thing because VALUES. That's it. The economics is viewed to be a useful stick to sidestep this.

I think the domestic British market is too small, and global trade is trending to become less free, and this is why being divorced from the single market is a problem for Britain establishing industries in new technologies.

I wouldn't say it's the biggest problem, but I think it's probably a big enough problem that you can't just ignore it. Some unreconciled Remainers will attempt to use the problem to push for rejoining, when there are other potential ways forward that have a better chance of winning majority public support.

Obviously hard-core Leavers may make a value judgement that the economic costs are an acceptable price for freedom, but I never thought Britain wasn't free as an EU member, so I don't accept that value judgement.

That may be what you think, but there is a distinct lack of evidence to substantiate those thoughts.

Britain is not the sick man of Europe, Germany is.

Britain has outgrown the Eurozone, despite Brexit.

The idea we would have outgrown them even more, if only we were shackled to their low growing economy, is entirely theoretical and without an iota of actual substantial evidence.

How on earth do you get the idea that Britain has outgrown the EU.

There is a really simple test as to the strength of a country, you look at the exchange rate.

In 2015 flying round Europe I got €1.40 to £1. After Brexit in 2017 I got about €1.25. Last year it was €1.18 and today it’s about €1.13 (or it was). Heck in Prague a Happy Meal (we needed the loo and Mrs Eek need some quick protein) a Happy Meal cost £6

Two beliefs on the populist right;

1 Britain's GDP performance since 2016 has been fine and Brexit wasn't a problem.

2 Britain's GDP has been artificially inflated by the immigration spike.

They can't both be true.

Who said its been fine? Its been better than Europe, but Europe's hasn't been fine, which is why we were right to leave that failing institution.

2 is easily resolved by looking at per capita data.

Germany GPD per capita:
2016 $42,961; 2024 $55,800; 29.9% up

Eurozone GDP per capita:
2016 $35,232; 2024 $46,274; 31.3% up

UK GDP per capita:
2016 $40,988; 2024 $52,636; 28.4% up

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?end=2024&locations=DE-GB-XC&start=2016

Appreciate the effort everyone but using data is the most ridiculously weak economic analysis you'll ever come across. There is absolutely no way you can prove this point either way without coming up with some kind of counterfactual where the UK stayed in the EU, and given we've had COVID and Ukraine since then, this is very tricky indeed.

And from when do we even start modelling this? When the chance of Brexit appeared in the first place, and investment decisions started to change? When we voted to leave? When we left? When we sorted out delays at Dover? What indicators do you use - trade volumes? GDP per capita? Do you weight by sector? - Germany is much more dependent on energy, manufacturing etc etc

Happily, we do have some economists having a stab at it taking all this into account. I'd much rather go with their assessment than this facile, juvenile nonsense.

Clearly exiting your biggest market is going to decrease trade and make the country a less attractive place to invest in. So it's a question what number you put on your loss. Economist models converge on a 6% to 8% figure but if you find that precision spurious, you could just say the loss is significant but not disastrous.

FWIW I don't think the economic loss is the biggest problem with Brexit.

The issue with this analysis is that it ignores all of the actual reasons many of us voted for Brexit and would do so again.

I would far rather be in a solid economic block with the rest of Europe, but that is not on offer without them sticking their oar into many other areas. For others (though not me) open borders is also an issue.

Those factors may not matter to you, but they matter to the plurality of the British public who will never see us join the EU, and are visible to the member states who would resist even bothering to start negotiations. Even Starmer’s modest current proposals are getting close to the point that Badenoch and Farage could kill them by promising to repeal in three years and making it look like it wasn’t worth the effort to member states.

The analysis is an as objective as possible statement of the economic impact of Brexit. It's perfectly valid to say the economic cost is a price worth paying for reasons that make sense to you.

The apparently firm consensus now is that Brexit was a mistake. Which I believe is the real problem because there's no similar consensus what to do about it. I think If Rejoin was easy we would be on a path to rejoin already. But it's not for a host of reasons, so we're in a situation where most people think Brexit a big mistake, aren't happy living with the mistake, but don't know what to do about it.

A good place for us to start is to stop listening to anybody who was in favour of it.

Not sure ignoring people who disagree with you is the greatest way to persuade them to change their mind. The whole point of democracy is that different people can have different but valid opinions.

They can do but sometimes people are just wrong. If you keep believing people who lie and don't understand how the world works don't be surprised if you keep making bad decisions.

If only our politicians down the decades had trusted the democratic process instead of being afraid of the people, it's very likely we'd never have left.

Well we trusted the democratic process in 2016, and now we are in the wilderness.

If you only believe in democracy when your side wins, you don't believe in it at all.

So you agree that the public should be allowed to change its mind?

Of course it should. That’s democracy. But most people seem to think that the state of the nation has been hugely hit by Brexit, when Covid and Ukraine have dwarfed the Brexit shadow. They also seem to imagine that re entry is the salve for all our issues, just as some others said leaving was the salve of all our ills.

The fact is that Brexit has failed. The public know this. We are poorer. Investment has declined. Trade has become more difficult. We are weakened on the international stage. Europe has been harmed just as our mutual enemies gather strength and our erstwhile allies walk away. And British political discourse has been scarred, as the Brexit campaign opened the door to the kind of open racism that I thought we had escaped. How much longer will the Brexiteers force the younger generations to pay for this stupid decision?

Brexit has succeeded, our politicians now have nowhere to hide from the decisions they make. That was its raison d'etre.

The fact we have grown by more than Europe has, "despite Brexit", just demonstrates there has been no economic self-harm from leaving that bloc either.

Not in fact a fact, as I demonstrated earlier.

You were incorrect earlier. You chose the date of the referendum to today - that’s not the date of Brexit but a choice designed to maximise the likelihood of you being able to make your preferred case

Well that's rich, given Barty chose, er... 2010 and then 2018. Not to cook the books at all, oh no.

The impact of the Brexit referendum was felt right away.

I gave a logic for the dates I chose and it was not to cook the books, remotely. To measure the change of an effect you need to choose a date before the effect begins, 2016 data was wildly distorted so is a flawed starting point as too would be 2020 (due to Covid) etc.

If I'd wanted to cook the books, I would have chosen 2011 as a starting date, but I did not.

You can choose any other appropriate date and its the same, because reality is the same. From before Brexit (implementation/referendum) to date the UK has grown by more.

Indeed looking back the past 15 years, the UK has grown by the most from 10/15 starting points, Germany from 1/15 and the Euro Area from 4/15.

2015/16 is distorted by German data collapsing and the UK supposedly being richer than Germany per capita, data not seen before or since, which is patently false.

I've lost the will to enter more spreadsheet data tbh.

One thing that puzzles me, though, about all these figures is they all (UK, Germany, Eurozone) indicate reasonable GDP per capita growth over the past 10--15 years, whichever date range you use.

Why then is the general mood so low and the population so pissed off?

Greater equality is a double whammy: it makes people feel poorer and it makes them feel it isn't worth it to work harder. What we need to make people feel better is bigger pay differentials.

WTAF are you talking about?

The issue is much more that inequality has grown so large numbers haven;t benefitted.

I'm talking about the problem of wage compression. The difference between the pay someone can expect at the bottom of the scale and the pay someone can expect at the median (which increasingly means a graduate job) is getting less and less.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2025-04-02/uk-minimum-wage-may-have-passed-a-tipping-point

FPT:

https://x.com/pippacrerar/status/1997296467195617672

Informal discussions have taken place inside No 10 on rejoining customs union as quickest way to boost growth

What do they know about growth? They spent the best part of a year talking down the economy and were surprised that confidence collapsed.

If they do it, the aim wouldn't really be "to boost growth" but to polarise the electorate and try to build a coalition based winning as many of the 48% as possible.

They probably will. As I've said before, many times, Starmer was a Tedious Tactical Triangulator in opposition and he's now a Tedious Tactical Triangulator in office.

He will end up neither trusted nor respected, so it might not even work no matter what he does.

Spare us the insulting language, Casino.

It's time you recognised that Brexiteers and their project are deeply unpopular. You shat the bed for all of us. Time to be a little less dismissive of those who want to change the sheets.

I don't read any insulting language in Casino's post - am I missing something?

I read his post simply as a rather cynical one that Starmer may well benefit from a tack towards the EU, despite being rather disliked, but that he might be so disliked by that point that people won't be willing to hold their noses.

I for one would put up with a pretty crap next few years policy-wise if a closer economic and security relationship with the EU was on the ballot next election.

Yes, some people have never made their peace with the result, and the push for Rejoin—in whatever packaging—still owes as much to wounded pride as to policy. For a certain set, the Leave vote wasn’t just wrong; it was an affront to the natural order in which they are always ‘right.’ Losing to people they openly despise is something they still haven’t processed. The irony is that the pomposity and arrogance that turns so many off remains entirely invisible to the because, in their minds, ‘the facts’ excuse everything - in fact, they provide an excuse for it. That in turn drives a vociferous reaction.

But the politics of 2025 aren’t the politics of 2015. That world isn’t coming back. A pro-EU tilt might help Starmer consolidate his core vote, but it risks bleeding plenty of Reform-facing marginals.

He’d shore up his presence in Parliament, but it’s not a route to another majority.

I can't speak for others but I think you do your opponents a disservice by referring to wounded pride.

Amongst those I spend time with (mostly teachers, and most were on the Remain side) Brexit doesn't really get talked about any more.

But I do think you are putting blinkers on if you only talk about pomposity and arrogance and discount the much more rational view that we have harmed ourselves economically and in relation to our security by divorcing from Europe just at the moment when other reliable global partners have imploded.

As a Remainer I dread the idea of British politics being consumed by Brexit again, and I still think there's a lot that can be done in Britain to help the British economy.

However, the evidence is beginning to stack up that isolating the British economy from the single market is having a cumulative and growing impact that needs to be addressed in one way or another.

But I think it's right to say that Starmer is likely to be more motivated by political positioning than economics. If he was motivated by economics there's a lot he could do that would be less contentious.

It isn't at all. It's not even close to being one of our main problems, as GDP growth charts show since 2008.

It's a big thing because VALUES. That's it. The economics is viewed to be a useful stick to sidestep this.

I think the domestic British market is too small, and global trade is trending to become less free, and this is why being divorced from the single market is a problem for Britain establishing industries in new technologies.

I wouldn't say it's the biggest problem, but I think it's probably a big enough problem that you can't just ignore it. Some unreconciled Remainers will attempt to use the problem to push for rejoining, when there are other potential ways forward that have a better chance of winning majority public support.

Obviously hard-core Leavers may make a value judgement that the economic costs are an acceptable price for freedom, but I never thought Britain wasn't free as an EU member, so I don't accept that value judgement.

That may be what you think, but there is a distinct lack of evidence to substantiate those thoughts.

Britain is not the sick man of Europe, Germany is.

Britain has outgrown the Eurozone, despite Brexit.

The idea we would have outgrown them even more, if only we were shackled to their low growing economy, is entirely theoretical and without an iota of actual substantial evidence.

How on earth do you get the idea that Britain has outgrown the EU.

There is a really simple test as to the strength of a country, you look at the exchange rate.

In 2015 flying round Europe I got €1.40 to £1. After Brexit in 2017 I got about €1.25. Last year it was €1.18 and today it’s about €1.13 (or it was). Heck in Prague a Happy Meal (we needed the loo and Mrs Eek need some quick protein) a Happy Meal cost £6

Two beliefs on the populist right;

1 Britain's GDP performance since 2016 has been fine and Brexit wasn't a problem.

2 Britain's GDP has been artificially inflated by the immigration spike.

They can't both be true.

Since 2019 (the year before we actually Brexited) GDP growth has been better in the UK than in Germany, France or Italy. Only a little compared to Germany but a lot compared to France and Italy.

Now personally I have argued since long before the referendum that we should be in the EEA. I even made bets on it on here, losing the money I won on the Brexit result to Richard N. on the EEA destination. I still believe that so I am not opposed to closer economic ties. But if you are going to have this debate then it should be based on reality and what is practical with our relationship with the EU. Not on the sort of fanciful rubbish being pushed by people like Lammy.

FPT:

https://x.com/pippacrerar/status/1997296467195617672

Informal discussions have taken place inside No 10 on rejoining customs union as quickest way to boost growth

What do they know about growth? They spent the best part of a year talking down the economy and were surprised that confidence collapsed.

If they do it, the aim wouldn't really be "to boost growth" but to polarise the electorate and try to build a coalition based winning as many of the 48% as possible.

They probably will. As I've said before, many times, Starmer was a Tedious Tactical Triangulator in opposition and he's now a Tedious Tactical Triangulator in office.

He will end up neither trusted nor respected, so it might not even work no matter what he does.

Spare us the insulting language, Casino.

It's time you recognised that Brexiteers and their project are deeply unpopular. You shat the bed for all of us. Time to be a little less dismissive of those who want to change the sheets.

I don't read any insulting language in Casino's post - am I missing something?

I read his post simply as a rather cynical one that Starmer may well benefit from a tack towards the EU, despite being rather disliked, but that he might be so disliked by that point that people won't be willing to hold their noses.

I for one would put up with a pretty crap next few years policy-wise if a closer economic and security relationship with the EU was on the ballot next election.

Yes, some people have never made their peace with the result, and the push for Rejoin—in whatever packaging—still owes as much to wounded pride as to policy. For a certain set, the Leave vote wasn’t just wrong; it was an affront to the natural order in which they are always ‘right.’ Losing to people they openly despise is something they still haven’t processed. The irony is that the pomposity and arrogance that turns so many off remains entirely invisible to the because, in their minds, ‘the facts’ excuse everything - in fact, they provide an excuse for it. That in turn drives a vociferous reaction.

But the politics of 2025 aren’t the politics of 2015. That world isn’t coming back. A pro-EU tilt might help Starmer consolidate his core vote, but it risks bleeding plenty of Reform-facing marginals.

He’d shore up his presence in Parliament, but it’s not a route to another majority.

I can't speak for others but I think you do your opponents a disservice by referring to wounded pride.

Amongst those I spend time with (mostly teachers, and most were on the Remain side) Brexit doesn't really get talked about any more.

But I do think you are putting blinkers on if you only talk about pomposity and arrogance and discount the much more rational view that we have harmed ourselves economically and in relation to our security by divorcing from Europe just at the moment when other reliable global partners have imploded.

As a Remainer I dread the idea of British politics being consumed by Brexit again, and I still think there's a lot that can be done in Britain to help the British economy.

However, the evidence is beginning to stack up that isolating the British economy from the single market is having a cumulative and growing impact that needs to be addressed in one way or another.

But I think it's right to say that Starmer is likely to be more motivated by political positioning than economics. If he was motivated by economics there's a lot he could do that would be less contentious.

It isn't at all. It's not even close to being one of our main problems, as GDP growth charts show since 2008.

It's a big thing because VALUES. That's it. The economics is viewed to be a useful stick to sidestep this.

I think the domestic British market is too small, and global trade is trending to become less free, and this is why being divorced from the single market is a problem for Britain establishing industries in new technologies.

I wouldn't say it's the biggest problem, but I think it's probably a big enough problem that you can't just ignore it. Some unreconciled Remainers will attempt to use the problem to push for rejoining, when there are other potential ways forward that have a better chance of winning majority public support.

Obviously hard-core Leavers may make a value judgement that the economic costs are an acceptable price for freedom, but I never thought Britain wasn't free as an EU member, so I don't accept that value judgement.

That may be what you think, but there is a distinct lack of evidence to substantiate those thoughts.

Britain is not the sick man of Europe, Germany is.

Britain has outgrown the Eurozone, despite Brexit.

The idea we would have outgrown them even more, if only we were shackled to their low growing economy, is entirely theoretical and without an iota of actual substantial evidence.

How on earth do you get the idea that Britain has outgrown the EU.

There is a really simple test as to the strength of a country, you look at the exchange rate.

In 2015 flying round Europe I got €1.40 to £1. After Brexit in 2017 I got about €1.25. Last year it was €1.18 and today it’s about €1.13 (or it was). Heck in Prague a Happy Meal (we needed the loo and Mrs Eek need some quick protein) a Happy Meal cost £6

Two beliefs on the populist right;

1 Britain's GDP performance since 2016 has been fine and Brexit wasn't a problem.

2 Britain's GDP has been artificially inflated by the immigration spike.

They can't both be true.

Who said its been fine? Its been better than Europe, but Europe's hasn't been fine, which is why we were right to leave that failing institution.

2 is easily resolved by looking at per capita data.

Germany GPD per capita:
2016 $42,961; 2024 $55,800; 29.9% up

Eurozone GDP per capita:
2016 $35,232; 2024 $46,274; 31.3% up

UK GDP per capita:
2016 $40,988; 2024 $52,636; 28.4% up

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?end=2024&locations=DE-GB-XC&start=2016

Appreciate the effort everyone but using data is the most ridiculously weak economic analysis you'll ever come across. There is absolutely no way you can prove this point either way without coming up with some kind of counterfactual where the UK stayed in the EU, and given we've had COVID and Ukraine since then, this is very tricky indeed.

And from when do we even start modelling this? When the chance of Brexit appeared in the first place, and investment decisions started to change? When we voted to leave? When we left? When we sorted out delays at Dover? What indicators do you use - trade volumes? GDP per capita? Do you weight by sector? - Germany is much more dependent on energy, manufacturing etc etc

Happily, we do have some economists having a stab at it taking all this into account. I'd much rather go with their assessment than this facile, juvenile nonsense.

Clearly exiting your biggest market is going to decrease trade and make the country a less attractive place to invest in. So it's a question what number you put on your loss. Economist models converge on a 6% to 8% figure but if you find that precision spurious, you could just say the loss is significant but not disastrous.

FWIW I don't think the economic loss is the biggest problem with Brexit.

The issue with this analysis is that it ignores all of the actual reasons many of us voted for Brexit and would do so again.

I would far rather be in a solid economic block with the rest of Europe, but that is not on offer without them sticking their oar into many other areas. For others (though not me) open borders is also an issue.

Those factors may not matter to you, but they matter to the plurality of the British public who will never see us join the EU, and are visible to the member states who would resist even bothering to start negotiations. Even Starmer’s modest current proposals are getting close to the point that Badenoch and Farage could kill them by promising to repeal in three years and making it look like it wasn’t worth the effort to member states.

The analysis is an as objective as possible statement of the economic impact of Brexit. It's perfectly valid to say the economic cost is a price worth paying for reasons that make sense to you.

The apparently firm consensus now is that Brexit was a mistake. Which I believe is the real problem because there's no similar consensus what to do about it. I think If Rejoin was easy we would be on a path to rejoin already. But it's not for a host of reasons, so we're in a situation where most people think Brexit a big mistake, aren't happy living with the mistake, but don't know what to do about it.

A good place for us to start is to stop listening to anybody who was in favour of it.

Not sure ignoring people who disagree with you is the greatest way to persuade them to change their mind. The whole point of democracy is that different people can have different but valid opinions.

They can do but sometimes people are just wrong. If you keep believing people who lie and don't understand how the world works don't be surprised if you keep making bad decisions.

If only our politicians down the decades had trusted the democratic process instead of being afraid of the people, it's very likely we'd never have left.

Well we trusted the democratic process in 2016, and now we are in the wilderness.

If you only believe in democracy when your side wins, you don't believe in it at all.

So you agree that the public should be allowed to change its mind?

Of course it should. That’s democracy. But most people seem to think that the state of the nation has been hugely hit by Brexit, when Covid and Ukraine have dwarfed the Brexit shadow. They also seem to imagine that re entry is the salve for all our issues, just as some others said leaving was the salve of all our ills.

The fact is that Brexit has failed. The public know this. We are poorer. Investment has declined. Trade has become more difficult. We are weakened on the international stage. Europe has been harmed just as our mutual enemies gather strength and our erstwhile allies walk away. And British political discourse has been scarred, as the Brexit campaign opened the door to the kind of open racism that I thought we had escaped. How much longer will the Brexiteers force the younger generations to pay for this stupid decision?

FPT:

https://x.com/pippacrerar/status/1997296467195617672

Informal discussions have taken place inside No 10 on rejoining customs union as quickest way to boost growth

What do they know about growth? They spent the best part of a year talking down the economy and were surprised that confidence collapsed.

If they do it, the aim wouldn't really be "to boost growth" but to polarise the electorate and try to build a coalition based winning as many of the 48% as possible.

They probably will. As I've said before, many times, Starmer was a Tedious Tactical Triangulator in opposition and he's now a Tedious Tactical Triangulator in office.

He will end up neither trusted nor respected, so it might not even work no matter what he does.

Spare us the insulting language, Casino.

It's time you recognised that Brexiteers and their project are deeply unpopular. You shat the bed for all of us. Time to be a little less dismissive of those who want to change the sheets.

I don't read any insulting language in Casino's post - am I missing something?

I read his post simply as a rather cynical one that Starmer may well benefit from a tack towards the EU, despite being rather disliked, but that he might be so disliked by that point that people won't be willing to hold their noses.

I for one would put up with a pretty crap next few years policy-wise if a closer economic and security relationship with the EU was on the ballot next election.

Yes, some people have never made their peace with the result, and the push for Rejoin—in whatever packaging—still owes as much to wounded pride as to policy. For a certain set, the Leave vote wasn’t just wrong; it was an affront to the natural order in which they are always ‘right.’ Losing to people they openly despise is something they still haven’t processed. The irony is that the pomposity and arrogance that turns so many off remains entirely invisible to the because, in their minds, ‘the facts’ excuse everything - in fact, they provide an excuse for it. That in turn drives a vociferous reaction.

But the politics of 2025 aren’t the politics of 2015. That world isn’t coming back. A pro-EU tilt might help Starmer consolidate his core vote, but it risks bleeding plenty of Reform-facing marginals.

He’d shore up his presence in Parliament, but it’s not a route to another majority.

I can't speak for others but I think you do your opponents a disservice by referring to wounded pride.

Amongst those I spend time with (mostly teachers, and most were on the Remain side) Brexit doesn't really get talked about any more.

But I do think you are putting blinkers on if you only talk about pomposity and arrogance and discount the much more rational view that we have harmed ourselves economically and in relation to our security by divorcing from Europe just at the moment when other reliable global partners have imploded.

As a Remainer I dread the idea of British politics being consumed by Brexit again, and I still think there's a lot that can be done in Britain to help the British economy.

However, the evidence is beginning to stack up that isolating the British economy from the single market is having a cumulative and growing impact that needs to be addressed in one way or another.

But I think it's right to say that Starmer is likely to be more motivated by political positioning than economics. If he was motivated by economics there's a lot he could do that would be less contentious.

It isn't at all. It's not even close to being one of our main problems, as GDP growth charts show since 2008.

It's a big thing because VALUES. That's it. The economics is viewed to be a useful stick to sidestep this.

I think the domestic British market is too small, and global trade is trending to become less free, and this is why being divorced from the single market is a problem for Britain establishing industries in new technologies.

I wouldn't say it's the biggest problem, but I think it's probably a big enough problem that you can't just ignore it. Some unreconciled Remainers will attempt to use the problem to push for rejoining, when there are other potential ways forward that have a better chance of winning majority public support.

Obviously hard-core Leavers may make a value judgement that the economic costs are an acceptable price for freedom, but I never thought Britain wasn't free as an EU member, so I don't accept that value judgement.

That may be what you think, but there is a distinct lack of evidence to substantiate those thoughts.

Britain is not the sick man of Europe, Germany is.

Britain has outgrown the Eurozone, despite Brexit.

The idea we would have outgrown them even more, if only we were shackled to their low growing economy, is entirely theoretical and without an iota of actual substantial evidence.

How on earth do you get the idea that Britain has outgrown the EU.

There is a really simple test as to the strength of a country, you look at the exchange rate.

In 2015 flying round Europe I got €1.40 to £1. After Brexit in 2017 I got about €1.25. Last year it was €1.18 and today it’s about €1.13 (or it was). Heck in Prague a Happy Meal (we needed the loo and Mrs Eek need some quick protein) a Happy Meal cost £6

Two beliefs on the populist right;

1 Britain's GDP performance since 2016 has been fine and Brexit wasn't a problem.

2 Britain's GDP has been artificially inflated by the immigration spike.

They can't both be true.

Who said its been fine? Its been better than Europe, but Europe's hasn't been fine, which is why we were right to leave that failing institution.

2 is easily resolved by looking at per capita data.

Germany GPD per capita:
2016 $42,961; 2024 $55,800; 29.9% up

Eurozone GDP per capita:
2016 $35,232; 2024 $46,274; 31.3% up

UK GDP per capita:
2016 $40,988; 2024 $52,636; 28.4% up

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?end=2024&locations=DE-GB-XC&start=2016

Appreciate the effort everyone but using data is the most ridiculously weak economic analysis you'll ever come across. There is absolutely no way you can prove this point either way without coming up with some kind of counterfactual where the UK stayed in the EU, and given we've had COVID and Ukraine since then, this is very tricky indeed.

And from when do we even start modelling this? When the chance of Brexit appeared in the first place, and investment decisions started to change? When we voted to leave? When we left? When we sorted out delays at Dover? What indicators do you use - trade volumes? GDP per capita? Do you weight by sector? - Germany is much more dependent on energy, manufacturing etc etc

Happily, we do have some economists having a stab at it taking all this into account. I'd much rather go with their assessment than this facile, juvenile nonsense.

Clearly exiting your biggest market is going to decrease trade and make the country a less attractive place to invest in. So it's a question what number you put on your loss. Economist models converge on a 6% to 8% figure but if you find that precision spurious, you could just say the loss is significant but not disastrous.

FWIW I don't think the economic loss is the biggest problem with Brexit.

The issue with this analysis is that it ignores all of the actual reasons many of us voted for Brexit and would do so again.

I would far rather be in a solid economic block with the rest of Europe, but that is not on offer without them sticking their oar into many other areas. For others (though not me) open borders is also an issue.

Those factors may not matter to you, but they matter to the plurality of the British public who will never see us join the EU, and are visible to the member states who would resist even bothering to start negotiations. Even Starmer’s modest current proposals are getting close to the point that Badenoch and Farage could kill them by promising to repeal in three years and making it look like it wasn’t worth the effort to member states.

The analysis is an as objective as possible statement of the economic impact of Brexit. It's perfectly valid to say the economic cost is a price worth paying for reasons that make sense to you.

The apparently firm consensus now is that Brexit was a mistake. Which I believe is the real problem because there's no similar consensus what to do about it. I think If Rejoin was easy we would be on a path to rejoin already. But it's not for a host of reasons, so we're in a situation where most people think Brexit a big mistake, aren't happy living with the mistake, but don't know what to do about it.

A good place for us to start is to stop listening to anybody who was in favour of it.

Not sure ignoring people who disagree with you is the greatest way to persuade them to change their mind. The whole point of democracy is that different people can have different but valid opinions.

They can do but sometimes people are just wrong. If you keep believing people who lie and don't understand how the world works don't be surprised if you keep making bad decisions.

If only our politicians down the decades had trusted the democratic process instead of being afraid of the people, it's very likely we'd never have left.

Well we trusted the democratic process in 2016, and now we are in the wilderness.

If you only believe in democracy when your side wins, you don't believe in it at all.

"Bedbound pensioner, 84, convicted of not insuring car she'll never use again

An 84-year-old woman who is bedbound and reliant on daily care has been convicted of a driving offence after failing to insure a car"

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/pensioner-convicted-car-insurance-bedbound-single-justice-procedure-dvla-b1261313.html

Paywalled. Can't see a rather critical issue. Is it on the road, or on her drive?

If the former, then the alternative is, I suppose, being accused of dumping - which may not be preferable these days?

Also, did she respond to the notice?

“My car which has always been parked on my drive was of no use to me and I did not insure it on renewal as I will never drive again and have surrendered my driving licence."

There is no mention of whether it was SORNed.

Presumably no, which is the issue of computer-says-no idiots, following the Process State.

The Process is to SORN, you have not followed Process, so you must be prosecuted.

The logical response to that response would instead be "OK, if the car is on drive and you are not driving it again and have surrendered your licence, you need to SORN it, we will assist you with that". Rather than "we will send you to court for not following Process".

Of course it is, and a family member should have sorted the SORN. The article underplays the fact that she was given what is describes as a 'discharge' - probably meaning an absolute discharge, which means the court is saying you have technically committed an offence but you haven't really done anything wrong.

The process state does a lot of wickeder things than giving absolute discharges to little old ladies when they have broken the law and their family hasn't come to the rescue.

I imagine the bulk prosecution system gives no attention at all to the public interest when deciding to proceed, it will all be 'Computer says yes'.

If it gave a chance to reply before prosecution, and a reply was given, then surely someone at some point had to read the reply and think "we will still prosecute anyway despite this reply".

The courts have a ridiculous backlog and we are wasting court time with this kind of petty crap.

Maybe instead of abolishing trial by jury, we could stop to think from time to time whether every pettifogging Process breach needs to go before a court?

To paraphrase Dr Ian Malcolm, their lawyers were so preoccupied by whether or not they could [prosecute], they didn't stop to think if they should.

The Evening Standard (& other journalistic investigation) has revealed that nobody reads the pleas for mitigation in a Single Justice Procedure prosecution before they get to court. That’s one of the major problems with it - cases that should have been dropped immediately for lack of public interest are ending up in court & criminalising vulnerable people who have made what, to most people, seem like minor technical oversights in law at worst.

In this particular case, the DVLA /had/ all the information required to point out that someone who had surrendered their driving licence still had a registered vehicle in their name & it was neither SORNed nor insured. There’s nothing stopping them from writing a letter to the registered address in this case & giving a small amount of leeway. Instead we’ve wasted the courts time & criminalised an 84 year old. What good does that do society? Not much, I’d argue.

"Bedbound pensioner, 84, convicted of not insuring car she'll never use again

An 84-year-old woman who is bedbound and reliant on daily care has been convicted of a driving offence after failing to insure a car"

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/pensioner-convicted-car-insurance-bedbound-single-justice-procedure-dvla-b1261313.html

Paywalled. Can't see a rather critical issue. Is it on the road, or on her drive?

If the former, then the alternative is, I suppose, being accused of dumping - which may not be preferable these days?

Also, did she respond to the notice?

“My car which has always been parked on my drive was of no use to me and I did not insure it on renewal as I will never drive again and have surrendered my driving licence."

There is no mention of whether it was SORNed.

Presumably no, which is the issue of computer-says-no idiots, following the Process State.

The Process is to SORN, you have not followed Process, so you must be prosecuted.

The logical response to that response would instead be "OK, if the car is on drive and you are not driving it again and have surrendered your licence, you need to SORN it, we will assist you with that". Rather than "we will send you to court for not following Process".

Of course it is, and a family member should have sorted the SORN. The article underplays the fact that she was given what is describes as a 'discharge' - probably meaning an absolute discharge, which means the court is saying you have technically committed an offence but you haven't really done anything wrong.

The process state does a lot of wickeder things than giving absolute discharges to little old ladies when they have broken the law and their family hasn't come to the rescue.

I imagine the bulk prosecution system gives no attention at all to the public interest when deciding to proceed, it will all be 'Computer says yes'.

If it gave a chance to reply before prosecution, and a reply was given, then surely someone at some point had to read the reply and think "we will still prosecute anyway despite this reply".

The courts have a ridiculous backlog and we are wasting court time with this kind of petty crap.

Maybe instead of abolishing trial by jury, we could stop to think from time to time whether every pettifogging Process breach needs to go before a court?

To paraphrase Dr Ian Malcolm, their lawyers were so preoccupied by whether or not they could [prosecute], they didn't stop to think if they should.