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
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.
I was born in 1972. The first time my country asked me to vote on the EU was in 2016. We didn’t even get to vote for Lisbon - an embarrassed Gordo signed it away from the cameras.
The truth is the political elites simply didn’t trust the British public to do the right thing.
Apart from at every general election where the public could stand and vote for parties supporting our exit from the EU and chose not to, you mean. I was born in 1975 and I've never been asked to vote on NATO, or the royal family, or what side of the road to drive on, or naming one of our aircraft carriers Boaty McBoatface, or whether we should move the capital to Droitwich. I guess the political elites simply don't trust the British public to do the right thing.
Most people don’t vote for just one bit of a parties policies.
Every other EU nation had votes of their populace when major changes happened. We didn’t.
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
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?
The fact is, the British public screwed up. Maybe it was really the fault of Cameron (Eton College and Oxford University), Johnson (Eton and Oxford) and Farage (Dulwich College and Coutts), who are definitely not elites thanks to their referendum.
My dad is really into wine, but not much into food. He’s recently gone pescatarian, and feeding him has become an even more thankless task for my poor mum
I want to get dad interested in pairing wine with food, so he’ll at least show a bit of interest in the food. I was looking up smoked haddock wine pairings and found a recipe on a Tuscan wine website - smoked haddock with a dulse sauce
It’s a red seaweed that’s an ingredient in much traditional Irish cuisine. And apparently it’s a superfood, packed with minerals and protein
I think that it might be a good dietary addition for dad.. Does anyone know if it tastes good?
No idea, but I love smoked haddock and I love wine, so I'm going to try it
Interesting - not tried it but it sounds rather different from carragheen/laverbread/nori which behave like spinach and which are familiar to me from Welsh and Japanese meals.
Apparently chewy, fries to end up a bit like bacon.
But one or two warnings about the high iodine content in particular and eating it too often or perhaps not at all if the consumer has kidney problems and so forth.
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
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.
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
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.
I was born in 1972. The first time my country asked me to vote on the EU was in 2016. We didn’t even get to vote for Lisbon - an embarrassed Gordo signed it away from the cameras.
The truth is the political elites simply didn’t trust the British public to do the right thing.
Apart from at every general election where the public could stand and vote for parties supporting our exit from the EU and chose not to, you mean. I was born in 1975 and I've never been asked to vote on NATO, or the royal family, or what side of the road to drive on, or naming one of our aircraft carriers Boaty McBoatface, or whether we should move the capital to Droitwich. I guess the political elites simply don't trust the British public to do the right thing.
I support Sultana on this thing only. I despise the idea of the monarchy. I despise having someone coming from the right vagina (or hacked out of the right belly) being given first prize in the national set up.
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
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?
The fact is, the British public screwed up. Maybe it was really the fault of Cameron (Eton College and Oxford University), Johnson (Eton and Oxford) and Farage (Dulwich College and Coutts), who are definitely not elites thanks to their referendum.
The good old public didn't screw up. The screw ups were two fold: not asking our referendum consent as the European project developed as a number of other countries did, and we were sometimes promised; this allowed the EU to take a shape which when in a majority wanted to be out, and when out a majority want to be in.
The second screw up was the parliament/government managing of the Brexit process without a proper plan, and changing PM at the absolute moment he had to stay to see through his own decision to hold a referendum.
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
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?
The fact is, the British public screwed up. Maybe it was really the fault of Cameron (Eton College and Oxford University), Johnson (Eton and Oxford) and Farage (Dulwich College and Coutts), who are definitely not elites thanks to their referendum.
The electorate screws up all the time, because it's what people do. Hence the whole "democracy is the ability to change your mind" thing.
For elections to Parliament, and (effectively) choosing a Prime Minister, we set the time limit at five years. A referendum is different, and probably does cast a longer shadow. But it's not infinite. (And Wilson had an EEC referendum 2.5 years after the UK had joined.)
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
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?
Yup. They can put into power a party promising, in its manifesto, to rejoin.
OT - So which pollsters did best at the last GE? Verian, Norstat, MIC and JLP were the only pollsters to get within 5% which for me is an acceptable result.. Verian and Norstat aren't doing GB polling at the moment. Find Out Now whiffed by double figures - which can happen to the best pollsters. Just ask Ann Selzer in Iowa. However, I'd not be putting my shirt on FON being right next time and everyone else being wrong. Opinium and Survation had bad 2024 GE results but do have a decent past record - likewise Ipsos. FON did badly and have no track record to put against it
To me - given the track record of British polling I would be very careful about relying on it too much. As a comparison to determine trends it is fine. As a 'snap-shot' of what percentages a given party hass on a certain date it is pretty much useless in the UK. The record of US polling is MUCH better in what should be a much tougher playground. You have to also look at local by election results. They are much harder to interpret but unless they are endorsing a trend shown in polls I am massively sceptical
What can we say? Lab are certainly in big trouble (Sunak style trouble). Ref are certainly doing very well - if not quite as well as in May. They have a chance of a majority but it is many miles from being a probability let alone a certainty. The Cons are doing very poorly - well down on their GE position. The Lib Dems are probably ahead of their GE position and the Greens certainly are. That's about it.
It would be great to recreate the Nate Silver polling average for the UK - looking at 'partisan lean', weighting for recency, etc.
If I didn't have a really demanding job, I'd probably take a shot at it.
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
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?
The fact is, the British public screwed up. Maybe it was really the fault of Cameron (Eton College and Oxford University), Johnson (Eton and Oxford) and Farage (Dulwich College and Coutts), who are definitely not elites thanks to their referendum.
The good old public didn't screw up. The screw ups were two fold: not asking our referendum consent as the European project developed as a number of other countries did, and we were sometimes promised; this allowed the EU to take a shape which when in a majority wanted to be out, and when out a majority want to be in.
The second screw up was the parliament/government managing of the Brexit process without a proper plan, and changing PM at the absolute moment he had to stay to see through his own decision to hold a referendum.
Yes. I would put it more simply. 'If you ask a stupid question ... "
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
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?
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
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?
The fact is, the British public screwed up. Maybe it was really the fault of Cameron (Eton College and Oxford University), Johnson (Eton and Oxford) and Farage (Dulwich College and Coutts), who are definitely not elites thanks to their referendum.
The good old public didn't screw up. The screw ups were two fold: not asking our referendum consent as the European project developed as a number of other countries did, and we were sometimes promised; this allowed the EU to take a shape which when in a majority wanted to be out, and when out a majority want to be in.
The second screw up was the parliament/government managing of the Brexit process without a proper plan, and changing PM at the absolute moment he had to stay to see through his own decision to hold a referendum.
Dave, having walked off, should have walked off into the sunset.
But- had he stayed on- what could he have done that TM didn't do and get destroyed for?
One of the issues with a constant debate about the merits of Brexit, is that it soaks up time and effort that could be redirected at other issues such as the malign influence of other countries on our direction.
That famous tome, Britannia Unchained might need a sequel - Britannia Adrift and all at Sea. On which shores we will end up needs some consideration.
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
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 is not the only, or probably main cause of an increase in racist langauge. The West is seeing an unprecedented (for modern times) wave of people from different cultures. Not everyone likes it. If anything Brexit was a response to that, rather than being a cause of racism in itself.
Brexit, as defined by the narrow vision of economics, is probably a failure at the current time. Might not be in ten or twenty years. But Brexit was never solely about economics.
My dad is really into wine, but not much into food. He’s recently gone pescatarian, and feeding him has become an even more thankless task for my poor mum
I want to get dad interested in pairing wine with food, so he’ll at least show a bit of interest in the food. I was looking up smoked haddock wine pairings and found a recipe on a Tuscan wine website - smoked haddock with a dulse sauce
It’s a red seaweed that’s an ingredient in much traditional Irish cuisine. And apparently it’s a superfood, packed with minerals and protein
I think that it might be a good dietary addition for dad.. Does anyone know if it tastes good?
No idea, but I love smoked haddock and I love wine, so I'm going to try it
Interesting - not tried it but it sounds rather different from carragheen/laverbread/nori which behave like spinach and which are familiar to me from Welsh and Japanese meals.
Apparently chewy, fries to end up a bit like bacon.
But one or two warnings about the high iodine content in particular and eating it too often or perhaps not at all if the consumer has kidney problems and so forth.
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
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?
The fact is, the British public screwed up. Maybe it was really the fault of Cameron (Eton College and Oxford University), Johnson (Eton and Oxford) and Farage (Dulwich College and Coutts), who are definitely not elites thanks to their referendum.
The good old public didn't screw up. The screw ups were two fold: not asking our referendum consent as the European project developed as a number of other countries did, and we were sometimes promised; this allowed the EU to take a shape which when in a majority wanted to be out, and when out a majority want to be in.
The second screw up was the parliament/government managing of the Brexit process without a proper plan, and changing PM at the absolute moment he had to stay to see through his own decision to hold a referendum.
Dave, having walked off, should have walked off into the sunset.
But- had he stayed on- what could he have done that TM didn't do and get destroyed for?
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
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 is not the only, or probably main cause of an increase in racist langauge. The West is seeing an unprecedented (for modern times) wave of people from different cultures. Not everyone likes it. If anything Brexit was a response to that, rather than being a cause of racism in itself.
Brexit, as defined by the narrow vision of economics, is probably a failure at the current time. Might not be in ten or twenty years. But Brexit was never solely about economics.
I don't think Brexit was at all about economics, although austerity probably pushed the vote over the line
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
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 is not the only, or probably main cause of an increase in racist langauge. The West is seeing an unprecedented (for modern times) wave of people from different cultures. Not everyone likes it. If anything Brexit was a response to that, rather than being a cause of racism in itself.
Brexit, as defined by the narrow vision of economics, is probably a failure at the current time. Might not be in ten or twenty years. But Brexit was never solely about economics.
An underestimated aspect of Brexit is that it is a massive political failure. But this point people should have accepted it and moved on, but it's more unpopular than ever and a blight on the political landscape.
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
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?
Our change in fortunes goes back to 2007 rather than Brexit.
With hindsight, our biggest mistake was to start being moralistic about our main competitive advantage in finance which previously made London the natural home for all the world's dodgy money. That's why perhaps the most encouraging thing about the prospect of a Farage government is that he could correct this mistake and let Britain get back to doing what it does best.
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.
Not disagreeing with your argument but as a point of fact minimal court time wasted. These are fast.
Fuck justice and doing what’s right as long as it’s quick 👍
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.
Not disagreeing with your argument but as a point of fact minimal court time wasted. These are fast.
Fuck justice and doing what’s right as long as it’s quick 👍
In my view the magistrate delivered justice.
An absolute discharge
In your view, as you say.
I think the case should never have come to court. The mitigation should have been read and the case dismissed. Not in the public interest. You may think prosecuting bed ridden octogenrians needing carers four times a diary for car insurance offences is okay. I don’t.
Do you not think of the stress and worry this causes people as the process is often the punishment rather than the sentence. Course you don’t. That would require empathy.
Don’t personalise it.
I was discussing what the magistrate did given the situation they found themselves in.
Sorry, you’re right, you’re a decent chap and I shouldn’t personalise, I’m in the wrong there and I do apologise. few things in life make me angry but the SJPs and how justice fucks over people for small transgressions yet people who commit all sorts,of crimes get away with it because plod can’t be arsed
The pensioner still committed an offence, owning a vehicle without insurance and the Justice did entirely the right thing giving her an absolute discharge.
It is for Parliament to change the law so that owning a vehicle without insurance you cannot and will not drive is not an offence, not the CPS, DVLA, police and JPs
I have always thought Sorn is a regulatory step too far. It is cars that are driven on the public highway we need to regulate, not ones that aren't.
And insurance is at odds with the rules about MOTs where is is *not* an offence to own a car where the MOT has expired.
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
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 is not the only, or probably main cause of an increase in racist langauge. The West is seeing an unprecedented (for modern times) wave of people from different cultures. Not everyone likes it. If anything Brexit was a response to that, rather than being a cause of racism in itself.
Brexit, as defined by the narrow vision of economics, is probably a failure at the current time. Might not be in ten or twenty years. But Brexit was never solely about economics.
An underestimated aspect of Brexit is that it is a massive political failure. But this point people should have accepted it and moved on, but it's more unpopular than ever and a blight on the political landscape.
I wonder about how it sits with the ‘not us’, as another forum describes the general public. We, as mostly politics obsessed weirdos, think about it a lot. Does Joe or Joanna Public do that? Unless prompted in opinion polling, for instance? My Dad has moved onto railing against Labours tax raid on Private Schools. No idea why.
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
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?
Our change in fortines goes back to 2007 rather than Brexit.
With hindsight, our biggest mistake was to start being moralistic about our main competitive advantage in finance which previously made London the natural home for all the world's dodgy money. That's why perhaps the most encouraging thing about the prospect of a Farage government is that he could correct this mistake and let Britain get back to doing what it does best.
A home for dodgy money and some dodgy plutocrats. Will I need to doff my hat when addressing them - in a sovereign sort of way?
One of the issues with a constant debate about the merits of Brexit, is that it soaks up time and effort that could be redirected at other issues such as the malign influence of other countries on our direction.
That famous tome, Britannia Unchained might need a sequel - Britannia Adrift and all at Sea. On which shores we will end up needs some consideration.
I agree but it is for the moment unavoidable. In economic terms it is essential we are in, and in UK political terms it is essential we are out.
These have not changed since 2016. The trade and other advantages are obvious, as is the importance post-Trumpism of big global powers, of which the EU is one, hanging together. So we have to be in.
But, as we may have noticed, nothing since 2016 has made it any less politically essential to control our own borders. Which is why Starmer/Mahmood sounds like Reform on the subject. So we have to be out.
My dad is really into wine, but not much into food. He’s recently gone pescatarian, and feeding him has become an even more thankless task for my poor mum
I want to get dad interested in pairing wine with food, so he’ll at least show a bit of interest in the food. I was looking up smoked haddock wine pairings and found a recipe on a Tuscan wine website - smoked haddock with a dulse sauce
It’s a red seaweed that’s an ingredient in much traditional Irish cuisine. And apparently it’s a superfood, packed with minerals and protein
I think that it might be a good dietary addition for dad.. Does anyone know if it tastes good?
No idea, but I love smoked haddock and I love wine, so I'm going to try it
Interesting - not tried it but it sounds rather different from carragheen/laverbread/nori which behave like spinach and which are familiar to me from Welsh and Japanese meals.
Apparently chewy, fries to end up a bit like bacon.
But one or two warnings about the high iodine content in particular and eating it too often or perhaps not at all if the consumer has kidney problems and so forth.
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
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.
As we keep noting, though, the majority have for some time now been quite clear they think that the majority got it wrong.
Perhaps it's you that doesn't believe in democracy ?
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
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.
I was born in 1972. The first time my country asked me to vote on the EU was in 2016. We didn’t even get to vote for Lisbon - an embarrassed Gordo signed it away from the cameras.
The truth is the political elites simply didn’t trust the British public to do the right thing.
Apart from at every general election where the public could stand and vote for parties supporting our exit from the EU and chose not to, you mean. I was born in 1975 and I've never been asked to vote on NATO, or the royal family, or what side of the road to drive on, or naming one of our aircraft carriers Boaty McBoatface, or whether we should move the capital to Droitwich. I guess the political elites simply don't trust the British public to do the right thing.
Most people don’t vote for just one bit of a parties policies.
Every other EU nation had votes of their populace when major changes happened. We didn’t.
That's clearly not true. How many referendums has Germany had on the EU for example?
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
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 is not the only, or probably main cause of an increase in racist langauge. The West is seeing an unprecedented (for modern times) wave of people from different cultures. Not everyone likes it. If anything Brexit was a response to that, rather than being a cause of racism in itself.
Brexit, as defined by the narrow vision of economics, is probably a failure at the current time. Might not be in ten or twenty years. But Brexit was never solely about economics.
An underestimated aspect of Brexit is that it is a massive political failure. But this point people should have accepted it and moved on, but it's more unpopular than ever and a blight on the political landscape.
I wonder about how it sits with the ‘not us’, as another forum describes the general public. We, as mostly politics obsessed weirdos, think about it a lot. Does Joe or Joanna Public do that? Unless prompted in opinion polling, for instance? My Dad has moved onto railing against Labours tax raid on Private Schools. No idea why.
At the end of the day you can only find out what people think by asking them. Hence polling. This survey is reasonably in-depth and what is coming across to me is people overwhelmingly think Brexit has been a failure but they don't know what to do about it.
One of the issues with a constant debate about the merits of Brexit, is that it soaks up time and effort that could be redirected at other issues such as the malign influence of other countries on our direction.
That famous tome, Britannia Unchained might need a sequel - Britannia Adrift and all at Sea. On which shores we will end up needs some consideration.
I agree but it is for the moment unavoidable. In economic terms it is essential we are in, and in UK political terms it is essential we are out.
These have not changed since 2016. The trade and other advantages are obvious, as is the importance post-Trumpism of big global powers, of which the EU is one, hanging together. So we have to be in.
But, as we may have noticed, nothing since 2016 has made it any less politically essential to control our own borders. Which is why Starmer/Mahmood sounds like Reform on the subject. So we have to be out.
Except that, once you optimise by those constraints, you end up where TMthenPM did, and the politics of that doesn't work, either.
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
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?
Only until the Remainers can force them into paying to reverse it.
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
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?
The fact is, the British public screwed up. Maybe it was really the fault of Cameron (Eton College and Oxford University), Johnson (Eton and Oxford) and Farage (Dulwich College and Coutts), who are definitely not elites thanks to their referendum.
The electorate screws up all the time, because it's what people do. Hence the whole "democracy is the ability to change your mind" thing.
For elections to Parliament, and (effectively) choosing a Prime Minister, we set the time limit at five years. A referendum is different, and probably does cast a longer shadow. But it's not infinite. (And Wilson had an EEC referendum 2.5 years after the UK had joined.)
I agree with you. And although as you know I am strongly in favour of Brexit, I do not believe it would be undemocratic to have another vote a decade after the first. Maybe we could gave a vote on membership every decade or couple of decades as a matter of course.
The comparison with Wilson is however misleading. He had the vote because Heath had not been honest enough to allow one before taking us in to the EEC.
Mind you, I will repeat my point of a few days ago. Why on earth would the EU be interested in letting us back in as long as there is the prospect of a Reform government in a few years? A prospect which, in all likelihood, would increase if Starmer pitches for revisiting Brexit.
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
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 is not the only, or probably main cause of an increase in racist langauge. The West is seeing an unprecedented (for modern times) wave of people from different cultures. Not everyone likes it. If anything Brexit was a response to that, rather than being a cause of racism in itself.
Brexit, as defined by the narrow vision of economics, is probably a failure at the current time. Might not be in ten or twenty years. But Brexit was never solely about economics.
An underestimated aspect of Brexit is that it is a massive political failure. But this point people should have accepted it and moved on, but it's more unpopular than ever and a blight on the political landscape.
I wonder about how it sits with the ‘not us’, as another forum describes the general public. We, as mostly politics obsessed weirdos, think about it a lot. Does Joe or Joanna Public do that? Unless prompted in opinion polling, for instance? My Dad has moved onto railing against Labours tax raid on Private Schools. No idea why.
At the end of the day you can only find out what people think by asking them. Hence polling. This survey is reasonably in-depth and what is coming across to me is people overwhelmingly think Brexit has been a failure but they don't know what to do about it.
So welcome to sovereignty. We can control our own borders; have our own standards; do our own trade deals etc. But at the same time we worry about the Chinese and if they are spying; the US and whether their money is flowing to the wrong groups; as is our concern with Russians and some politicians. And the EU - they're stealing our fish which is a step too far.
It seems this new found freedom has given us an identity crisis being neither European, or the 51st State. We better develop some idea of where we want to be or we'll end up like Austria bemoaning the loss of an empire.
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
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.
As we keep noting, though, the majority have for some time now been quite clear they think that the majority got it wrong.
Perhaps it's you that doesn't believe in democracy ?
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
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.
A good way to maintain your ignorance I suppose.
Because things are playing out exactly as Dan Hannan predicted, right? One thing I have earned from working in the financial services sector is don't keep listening to people who are wrong about everything. Not if you want to protect your clients' money and keep your own job. As a country we can't afford to keep making stupid decisions. The world is an unforgiving place for people who won't learn from their mistakes and correct them.
So why on Earth have you ever voted for any of the main political parties in the UK? They all screw up and none of them ever seem to learn. Nor, it seems, do you.
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
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?
The fact is, the British public screwed up. Maybe it was really the fault of Cameron (Eton College and Oxford University), Johnson (Eton and Oxford) and Farage (Dulwich College and Coutts), who are definitely not elites thanks to their referendum.
The good old public didn't screw up. The screw ups were two fold: not asking our referendum consent as the European project developed as a number of other countries did, and we were sometimes promised; this allowed the EU to take a shape which when in a majority wanted to be out, and when out a majority want to be in.
The second screw up was the parliament/government managing of the Brexit process without a proper plan, and changing PM at the absolute moment he had to stay to see through his own decision to hold a referendum.
Dave, having walked off, should have walked off into the sunset.
But- had he stayed on- what could he have done that TM didn't do and get destroyed for?
Well he had a majority to work with.
Also May insisted that Brexit meant a hard break. Cameron could have kept the single market- which Dan Hannan always insisted was not under threat.
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
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
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.
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
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
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 is not the only, or probably main cause of an increase in racist langauge. The West is seeing an unprecedented (for modern times) wave of people from different cultures. Not everyone likes it. If anything Brexit was a response to that, rather than being a cause of racism in itself.
Brexit, as defined by the narrow vision of economics, is probably a failure at the current time. Might not be in ten or twenty years. But Brexit was never solely about economics.
I don't think Brexit was at all about economics, although austerity probably pushed the vote over the line
Austerity, gerrymandering, a godawful negative campaign, all Cameron's chickens came home to roost. And since he did not trouble to nail down Leave's position, we have really no way of telling whether the Brexit we got is the Brexit we voted for.
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
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?
The fact is, the British public screwed up. Maybe it was really the fault of Cameron (Eton College and Oxford University), Johnson (Eton and Oxford) and Farage (Dulwich College and Coutts), who are definitely not elites thanks to their referendum.
The good old public didn't screw up. The screw ups were two fold: not asking our referendum consent as the European project developed as a number of other countries did, and we were sometimes promised; this allowed the EU to take a shape which when in a majority wanted to be out, and when out a majority want to be in.
The second screw up was the parliament/government managing of the Brexit process without a proper plan, and changing PM at the absolute moment he had to stay to see through his own decision to hold a referendum.
Dave, having walked off, should have walked off into the sunset.
But- had he stayed on- what could he have done that TM didn't do and get destroyed for?
Well he had a majority to work with.
Also May insisted that Brexit meant a hard break. Cameron could have kept the single market- which Dan Hannan always insisted was not under threat.
No conservative leader could have tried to keep FoM without being ousted by the party.
OT I am about to rewatch Margaret, which is available on BBC iplayer.
Drama charting Margaret Thatcher's astonishing fall from power, one of the most extraordinary stories of political assassination the world has seen. It took only 11 days for Thatcher to go from being the most powerful woman in the world to the tearful figure in the back of the car - a major tragedy in the true Shakespearean sense. We watch a woman lose the one thing she really cares about - power - changing from leader to victim before our eyes.
12 November 1990: As Thatcher prepares for her speech at the Lord Mayor's banquet at the Guildhall, Geoffrey Howe, her quietly spoken former foreign secretary and chancellor, pens the resignation speech that will stun the country and seal her fate. The next day, Howe makes his lethal speech in the Houses of Parliament, and the final ten days of Margaret Thatcher's reign begin https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00hy18h/margaret
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
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.
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
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.
My dad is really into wine, but not much into food. He’s recently gone pescatarian, and feeding him has become an even more thankless task for my poor mum
I want to get dad interested in pairing wine with food, so he’ll at least show a bit of interest in the food. I was looking up smoked haddock wine pairings and found a recipe on a Tuscan wine website - smoked haddock with a dulse sauce
It’s a red seaweed that’s an ingredient in much traditional Irish cuisine. And apparently it’s a superfood, packed with minerals and protein
I think that it might be a good dietary addition for dad.. Does anyone know if it tastes good?
No idea, but I love smoked haddock and I love wine, so I'm going to try it
Interesting - not tried it but it sounds rather different from carragheen/laverbread/nori which behave like spinach and which are familiar to me from Welsh and Japanese meals.
Apparently chewy, fries to end up a bit like bacon.
But one or two warnings about the high iodine content in particular and eating it too often or perhaps not at all if the consumer has kidney problems and so forth.
Ed Miliband is sizzling like a dulse sarnie..
BTW if your mum wants a simple recipe - make potato and leek or onion soup (lumpy or creamed as wished), and throw in bitesize chunks of proper undyed smoked haddock about halfway through (fillets from the fishmonger: kept in freezer and broken off as needed) - the timing will soon work itself out with experience. Maybe add some frozen North Atlantic prawns a few minutes before serving. With decent bread and butter. Good solid lunch. Basically cullen skink but without the posh creamy blending, just a coarse peasant/fisherfolk meal. Some would claim it needs fish stock but we just use a decent vegetarian stock cube as the smoked fish is strong enough.
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
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.
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
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.
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
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 for EU' in every cupboard
Just goes to show that divergence is possible. 👍
and made us all poorer
What evidence do you have for that, considering we've grown faster than Germany and Euro Area as a whole?
One of the single board vendors (might have been Turing Pi) advertised recently that you can currently buy their modules for less than the cost of the RAM soldered onto them
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
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 for EU' in every cupboard
Just goes to show that divergence is possible. 👍
and made us all poorer
What evidence do you have for that, considering we've grown faster than Germany and Euro Area as a whole?
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
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.
Yes, as a fact.
Obviously 2016 is a flawed benchmark, because of the wild swings in exchange rates due to the debate and referendum etc distorting the markets, but whether you choose a pre-referenda starting point of 2010, or a pre-Brexit starting point of 2018, the UK has as a matter of fact grown more per capita than either Germany or the Euro Area.
Germany 2018 $47,624; 2024 $55,800; 17.2% up Eurozone 2018 $39,213; 2024 $47,724; 21.7% up UK 2018 $42,794; 2024 $52,639; 23.0% up
You get the same if you choose 2010 (pre-Brexit referenda, pre-announcement, pre-swings) as a benchmark too. Same 2024 figures for each obviously:
Germany 2010 $42,409; 31.6% up Eurozone 2010 $37,496; 27.3% up UK 2010 $39,599; 32.9% up
Either way the UK has outgrown both Germany and the Euro Area as a whole. "Despite Brexit".
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
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.
Yes, as a fact.
Obviously 2016 is a flawed benchmark, because of the wild swings in exchange rates due to the debate and referendum etc distorting the markets, but whether you choose a pre-referenda starting point of 2010, or a pre-Brexit starting point of 2018, the UK has as a matter of fact grown more per capita than either Germany or the Euro Area.
Germany 2018 $47,624; 2024 $55,800; 17.2% up Eurozone 2018 $39,213; 2024 $47,724; 21.7% up UK 2018 $42,794; 2024 $52,639; 23.0% up
You get the same if you choose 2010 (pre-Brexit referenda, pre-announcement, pre-swings) as a benchmark too. Same 2024 figures for each obviously:
Germany 2010 $42,409; 31.6% up Eurozone 2010 $37,496; 27.3% up UK 2010 $39,599; 32.9% up
Either way the UK has outgrown both Germany and the Euro Area as a whole. "Despite Brexit".
Why ignore the non Euro states I wonder? We all know what you're trying to do.
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
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.
Yes, as a fact.
Obviously 2016 is a flawed benchmark, because of the wild swings in exchange rates due to the debate and referendum etc distorting the markets, but whether you choose a pre-referenda starting point of 2010, or a pre-Brexit starting point of 2018, the UK has as a matter of fact grown more per capita than either Germany or the Euro Area.
Germany 2018 $47,624; 2024 $55,800; 17.2% up Eurozone 2018 $39,213; 2024 $47,724; 21.7% up UK 2018 $42,794; 2024 $52,639; 23.0% up
You get the same if you choose 2010 (pre-Brexit referenda, pre-announcement, pre-swings) as a benchmark too. Same 2024 figures for each obviously:
Germany 2010 $42,409; 31.6% up Eurozone 2010 $37,496; 27.3% up UK 2010 $39,599; 32.9% up
Either way the UK has outgrown both Germany and the Euro Area as a whole. "Despite Brexit".
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
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.
Yes, as a fact.
Obviously 2016 is a flawed benchmark, because of the wild swings in exchange rates due to the debate and referendum etc distorting the markets, but whether you choose a pre-referenda starting point of 2010, or a pre-Brexit starting point of 2018, the UK has as a matter of fact grown more per capita than either Germany or the Euro Area.
Germany 2018 $47,624; 2024 $55,800; 17.2% up Eurozone 2018 $39,213; 2024 $47,724; 21.7% up UK 2018 $42,794; 2024 $52,639; 23.0% up
You get the same if you choose 2010 (pre-Brexit referenda, pre-announcement, pre-swings) as a benchmark too. Same 2024 figures for each obviously:
Germany 2010 $42,409; 31.6% up Eurozone 2010 $37,496; 27.3% up UK 2010 $39,599; 32.9% up
Either way the UK has outgrown both Germany and the Euro Area as a whole. "Despite Brexit".
Why ignore the non Euro states I wonder? We all know what you're trying to do.
The non-Euro states are primarily not our peers, though I doubt it changes the outcome, not trying to do anything by not looking at them.
Though if your argument is that the EU's primary policy is such a dismal failure we need to look at those outside of it, then that's an interesting argument.
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
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.
Yes, as a fact.
Obviously 2016 is a flawed benchmark, because of the wild swings in exchange rates due to the debate and referendum etc distorting the markets, but whether you choose a pre-referenda starting point of 2010, or a pre-Brexit starting point of 2018, the UK has as a matter of fact grown more per capita than either Germany or the Euro Area.
Germany 2018 $47,624; 2024 $55,800; 17.2% up Eurozone 2018 $39,213; 2024 $47,724; 21.7% up UK 2018 $42,794; 2024 $52,639; 23.0% up
You get the same if you choose 2010 (pre-Brexit referenda, pre-announcement, pre-swings) as a benchmark too. Same 2024 figures for each obviously:
Germany 2010 $42,409; 31.6% up Eurozone 2010 $37,496; 27.3% up UK 2010 $39,599; 32.9% up
Either way the UK has outgrown both Germany and the Euro Area as a whole. "Despite Brexit".
The referendum was in 2016. Fact.
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
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
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.
Yes, as a fact.
Obviously 2016 is a flawed benchmark, because of the wild swings in exchange rates due to the debate and referendum etc distorting the markets, but whether you choose a pre-referenda starting point of 2010, or a pre-Brexit starting point of 2018, the UK has as a matter of fact grown more per capita than either Germany or the Euro Area.
Germany 2018 $47,624; 2024 $55,800; 17.2% up Eurozone 2018 $39,213; 2024 $47,724; 21.7% up UK 2018 $42,794; 2024 $52,639; 23.0% up
You get the same if you choose 2010 (pre-Brexit referenda, pre-announcement, pre-swings) as a benchmark too. Same 2024 figures for each obviously:
Germany 2010 $42,409; 31.6% up Eurozone 2010 $37,496; 27.3% up UK 2010 $39,599; 32.9% up
Either way the UK has outgrown both Germany and the Euro Area as a whole. "Despite Brexit".
UK had it stayed inside the EU 2018 $42,794; 2024 $55,632; 30.0% up
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
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.
A good way to maintain your ignorance I suppose.
Because things are playing out exactly as Dan Hannan predicted, right? One thing I have earned from working in the financial services sector is don't keep listening to people who are wrong about everything. Not if you want to protect your clients' money and keep your own job. As a country we can't afford to keep making stupid decisions. The world is an unforgiving place for people who won't learn from their mistakes and correct them.
So why on Earth have you ever voted for any of the main political parties in the UK? They all screw up and none of them ever seem to learn. Nor, it seems, do you.
I'm not a fan of that kind of ad hominem. I am okay with my judgement. The two big mistakes the UK has made in recent decades, Iraq and Brexit, I got right.
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
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.
Yes, as a fact.
Obviously 2016 is a flawed benchmark, because of the wild swings in exchange rates due to the debate and referendum etc distorting the markets, but whether you choose a pre-referenda starting point of 2010, or a pre-Brexit starting point of 2018, the UK has as a matter of fact grown more per capita than either Germany or the Euro Area.
Germany 2018 $47,624; 2024 $55,800; 17.2% up Eurozone 2018 $39,213; 2024 $47,724; 21.7% up UK 2018 $42,794; 2024 $52,639; 23.0% up
You get the same if you choose 2010 (pre-Brexit referenda, pre-announcement, pre-swings) as a benchmark too. Same 2024 figures for each obviously:
Germany 2010 $42,409; 31.6% up Eurozone 2010 $37,496; 27.3% up UK 2010 $39,599; 32.9% up
Either way the UK has outgrown both Germany and the Euro Area as a whole. "Despite Brexit".
Why ignore the non Euro states I wonder? We all know what you're trying to do.
The non-Euro states are primarily not our peers, though I doubt it changes the outcome, not trying to do anything by not looking at them.
Though if your argument is that the EU's primary policy is such a dismal failure we need to look at those outside of it, then that's an interesting argument.
the other week you were arguing geography doesn't matter, now you've changed your tune, try to be consistent
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
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.
Yes, as a fact.
Obviously 2016 is a flawed benchmark, because of the wild swings in exchange rates due to the debate and referendum etc distorting the markets, but whether you choose a pre-referenda starting point of 2010, or a pre-Brexit starting point of 2018, the UK has as a matter of fact grown more per capita than either Germany or the Euro Area.
Germany 2018 $47,624; 2024 $55,800; 17.2% up Eurozone 2018 $39,213; 2024 $47,724; 21.7% up UK 2018 $42,794; 2024 $52,639; 23.0% up
You get the same if you choose 2010 (pre-Brexit referenda, pre-announcement, pre-swings) as a benchmark too. Same 2024 figures for each obviously:
Germany 2010 $42,409; 31.6% up Eurozone 2010 $37,496; 27.3% up UK 2010 $39,599; 32.9% up
Either way the UK has outgrown both Germany and the Euro Area as a whole. "Despite Brexit".
UK had it stayed inside the UK 2018 $42,794; 2024 $55,632; 30.0% up
[Citation needed]
What evidence for that, and what utterly BS assumptions underpin it?
OT - So which pollsters did best at the last GE? Verian, Norstat, MIC and JLP were the only pollsters to get within 5% which for me is an acceptable result.. Verian and Norstat aren't doing GB polling at the moment. Find Out Now whiffed by double figures - which can happen to the best pollsters. Just ask Ann Selzer in Iowa. However, I'd not be putting my shirt on FON being right next time and everyone else being wrong. Opinium and Survation had bad 2024 GE results but do have a decent past record - likewise Ipsos. FON did badly and have no track record to put against it
To me - given the track record of British polling I would be very careful about relying on it too much. As a comparison to determine trends it is fine. As a 'snap-shot' of what percentages a given party hass on a certain date it is pretty much useless in the UK. The record of US polling is MUCH better in what should be a much tougher playground. You have to also look at local by election results. They are much harder to interpret but unless they are endorsing a trend shown in polls I am massively sceptical
What can we say? Lab are certainly in big trouble (Sunak style trouble). Ref are certainly doing very well - if not quite as well as in May. They have a chance of a majority but it is many miles from being a probability let alone a certainty. The Cons are doing very poorly - well down on their GE position. The Lib Dems are probably ahead of their GE position and the Greens certainly are. That's about it.
The strange thing is that the polling at the GE was both completely wrong (on percentage of vote) and pretty much correct (in terms of getting seat numbers pretty much right). It seems that the voters were clever enough to turn out where they needed to and where they could safely stay on their sofa with Netflix and chill.
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
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.
Yes, as a fact.
Obviously 2016 is a flawed benchmark, because of the wild swings in exchange rates due to the debate and referendum etc distorting the markets, but whether you choose a pre-referenda starting point of 2010, or a pre-Brexit starting point of 2018, the UK has as a matter of fact grown more per capita than either Germany or the Euro Area.
Germany 2018 $47,624; 2024 $55,800; 17.2% up Eurozone 2018 $39,213; 2024 $47,724; 21.7% up UK 2018 $42,794; 2024 $52,639; 23.0% up
You get the same if you choose 2010 (pre-Brexit referenda, pre-announcement, pre-swings) as a benchmark too. Same 2024 figures for each obviously:
Germany 2010 $42,409; 31.6% up Eurozone 2010 $37,496; 27.3% up UK 2010 $39,599; 32.9% up
Either way the UK has outgrown both Germany and the Euro Area as a whole. "Despite Brexit".
Why ignore the non Euro states I wonder? We all know what you're trying to do.
The non-Euro states are primarily not our peers, though I doubt it changes the outcome, not trying to do anything by not looking at them.
Though if your argument is that the EU's primary policy is such a dismal failure we need to look at those outside of it, then that's an interesting argument.
the other week you were arguing geography doesn't matter, now you've changed your tune, try to be consistent
Geography does not matter.
Our peer nations are first-world, developed nations. France, Germany, Canada, Australia, NZ etc.
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
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 for EU' in every cupboard
A concession to open borders in NI, something you people claimed brexit would destroy.
Not required under Theresa May's deal, which you lot voted down just to show off.
Also not required under Starmer's putative phytosanitary deal which does not involve rejoining.
I will admit that simpletons thinking "Not for EU" means "worse food standards than EU" is an image problem.
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
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.
Yes, as a fact.
Obviously 2016 is a flawed benchmark, because of the wild swings in exchange rates due to the debate and referendum etc distorting the markets, but whether you choose a pre-referenda starting point of 2010, or a pre-Brexit starting point of 2018, the UK has as a matter of fact grown more per capita than either Germany or the Euro Area.
Germany 2018 $47,624; 2024 $55,800; 17.2% up Eurozone 2018 $39,213; 2024 $47,724; 21.7% up UK 2018 $42,794; 2024 $52,639; 23.0% up
You get the same if you choose 2010 (pre-Brexit referenda, pre-announcement, pre-swings) as a benchmark too. Same 2024 figures for each obviously:
Germany 2010 $42,409; 31.6% up Eurozone 2010 $37,496; 27.3% up UK 2010 $39,599; 32.9% up
Either way the UK has outgrown both Germany and the Euro Area as a whole. "Despite Brexit".
UK had it stayed inside the UK 2018 $42,794; 2024 $55,632; 30.0% up
[Citation needed]
What evidence for that, and what utterly BS assumptions underpin it?
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
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?
The fact is, the British public screwed up. Maybe it was really the fault of Cameron (Eton College and Oxford University), Johnson (Eton and Oxford) and Farage (Dulwich College and Coutts), who are definitely not elites thanks to their referendum.
The good old public didn't screw up. The screw ups were two fold: not asking our referendum consent as the European project developed as a number of other countries did, and we were sometimes promised; this allowed the EU to take a shape which when in a majority wanted to be out, and when out a majority want to be in.
The second screw up was the parliament/government managing of the Brexit process without a proper plan, and changing PM at the absolute moment he had to stay to see through his own decision to hold a referendum.
Dave, having walked off, should have walked off into the sunset.
But- had he stayed on- what could he have done that TM didn't do and get destroyed for?
Well he had a majority to work with.
Also May insisted that Brexit meant a hard break. Cameron could have kept the single market- which Dan Hannan always insisted was not under threat.
The blindingly obvious solution was a two speed Europe - an economic set up without the political / immigration aspects. And a harder core of countries on the path to political union.
But politicians on all sides were not flexible enough to get there
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
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.
Yes, as a fact.
Obviously 2016 is a flawed benchmark, because of the wild swings in exchange rates due to the debate and referendum etc distorting the markets, but whether you choose a pre-referenda starting point of 2010, or a pre-Brexit starting point of 2018, the UK has as a matter of fact grown more per capita than either Germany or the Euro Area.
Germany 2018 $47,624; 2024 $55,800; 17.2% up Eurozone 2018 $39,213; 2024 $47,724; 21.7% up UK 2018 $42,794; 2024 $52,639; 23.0% up
You get the same if you choose 2010 (pre-Brexit referenda, pre-announcement, pre-swings) as a benchmark too. Same 2024 figures for each obviously:
Germany 2010 $42,409; 31.6% up Eurozone 2010 $37,496; 27.3% up UK 2010 $39,599; 32.9% up
Either way the UK has outgrown both Germany and the Euro Area as a whole. "Despite Brexit".
UK had it stayed inside the UK 2018 $42,794; 2024 $55,632; 30.0% up
[Citation needed]
What evidence for that, and what utterly BS assumptions underpin it?
Prove me wrong if you're so certain about Brexit.
Already done: The UK has grown more than Germany and the Euro Area despite Brexit. As a matter of fact.
It is hubristic to believe were it not for Brexit we'd have outgrown them by even more.
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
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.
Yes, as a fact.
Obviously 2016 is a flawed benchmark, because of the wild swings in exchange rates due to the debate and referendum etc distorting the markets, but whether you choose a pre-referenda starting point of 2010, or a pre-Brexit starting point of 2018, the UK has as a matter of fact grown more per capita than either Germany or the Euro Area.
Germany 2018 $47,624; 2024 $55,800; 17.2% up Eurozone 2018 $39,213; 2024 $47,724; 21.7% up UK 2018 $42,794; 2024 $52,639; 23.0% up
You get the same if you choose 2010 (pre-Brexit referenda, pre-announcement, pre-swings) as a benchmark too. Same 2024 figures for each obviously:
Germany 2010 $42,409; 31.6% up Eurozone 2010 $37,496; 27.3% up UK 2010 $39,599; 32.9% up
Either way the UK has outgrown both Germany and the Euro Area as a whole. "Despite Brexit".
UK had it stayed inside the UK 2018 $42,794; 2024 $55,632; 30.0% up
[Citation needed]
What evidence for that, and what utterly BS assumptions underpin it?
Prove me wrong if you're so certain about Brexit.
Already done: The UK has grown more than Germany and the Euro Area despite Brexit. As a matter of fact.
It is hubristic to believe were it not for Brexit we'd have outgrown them by even more.
Why not? Germany has been stagnant in per capita terms.
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
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 is not the only, or probably main cause of an increase in racist langauge. The West is seeing an unprecedented (for modern times) wave of people from different cultures. Not everyone likes it. If anything Brexit was a response to that, rather than being a cause of racism in itself.
Brexit, as defined by the narrow vision of economics, is probably a failure at the current time. Might not be in ten or twenty years. But Brexit was never solely about economics.
That comes dangerously close to victim blaming in my view. If only brown people didn't exist, there wouldn't be any racism. The Brexit campaign made it acceptable to blame all our ills on "foreign" influences and encouraged people to think they could start making people "go home". It played a big role in putting us in the horrible place we find ourselves in now. Farage and his ilk are poison and always have been.
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
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
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
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.
Yes, as a fact.
Obviously 2016 is a flawed benchmark, because of the wild swings in exchange rates due to the debate and referendum etc distorting the markets, but whether you choose a pre-referenda starting point of 2010, or a pre-Brexit starting point of 2018, the UK has as a matter of fact grown more per capita than either Germany or the Euro Area.
Germany 2018 $47,624; 2024 $55,800; 17.2% up Eurozone 2018 $39,213; 2024 $47,724; 21.7% up UK 2018 $42,794; 2024 $52,639; 23.0% up
You get the same if you choose 2010 (pre-Brexit referenda, pre-announcement, pre-swings) as a benchmark too. Same 2024 figures for each obviously:
Germany 2010 $42,409; 31.6% up Eurozone 2010 $37,496; 27.3% up UK 2010 $39,599; 32.9% up
Either way the UK has outgrown both Germany and the Euro Area as a whole. "Despite Brexit".
Why ignore the non Euro states I wonder? We all know what you're trying to do.
The non-Euro states are primarily not our peers, though I doubt it changes the outcome, not trying to do anything by not looking at them.
Though if your argument is that the EU's primary policy is such a dismal failure we need to look at those outside of it, then that's an interesting argument.
the other week you were arguing geography doesn't matter, now you've changed your tune, try to be consistent
Geography does not matter.
Our peer nations are first-world, developed nations. France, Germany, Canada, Australia, NZ etc.
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
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.
Yes, as a fact.
Obviously 2016 is a flawed benchmark, because of the wild swings in exchange rates due to the debate and referendum etc distorting the markets, but whether you choose a pre-referenda starting point of 2010, or a pre-Brexit starting point of 2018, the UK has as a matter of fact grown more per capita than either Germany or the Euro Area.
Germany 2018 $47,624; 2024 $55,800; 17.2% up Eurozone 2018 $39,213; 2024 $47,724; 21.7% up UK 2018 $42,794; 2024 $52,639; 23.0% up
You get the same if you choose 2010 (pre-Brexit referenda, pre-announcement, pre-swings) as a benchmark too. Same 2024 figures for each obviously:
Germany 2010 $42,409; 31.6% up Eurozone 2010 $37,496; 27.3% up UK 2010 $39,599; 32.9% up
Either way the UK has outgrown both Germany and the Euro Area as a whole. "Despite Brexit".
UK had it stayed inside the UK 2018 $42,794; 2024 $55,632; 30.0% up
[Citation needed]
What evidence for that, and what utterly BS assumptions underpin it?
Prove me wrong if you're so certain about Brexit.
Already done: The UK has grown more than Germany and the Euro Area despite Brexit. As a matter of fact.
It is hubristic to believe were it not for Brexit we'd have outgrown them by even more.
Why not? Germany has been stagnant in per capita terms.
So we'd have improved our economy by tethering ourselves more to them? Huh?
European stagnation long preceded Brexit. The EU is failing to generate growth. As an actual fact, not a hypothetical theory.
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
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
Other remainer posters today have used the opposite argument: we must use 2016 because that's when the damage started. Investment uncertainty and so on. Pick the date you like, so long as it's consistent.
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
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.
Yes, as a fact.
Obviously 2016 is a flawed benchmark, because of the wild swings in exchange rates due to the debate and referendum etc distorting the markets, but whether you choose a pre-referenda starting point of 2010, or a pre-Brexit starting point of 2018, the UK has as a matter of fact grown more per capita than either Germany or the Euro Area.
Germany 2018 $47,624; 2024 $55,800; 17.2% up Eurozone 2018 $39,213; 2024 $47,724; 21.7% up UK 2018 $42,794; 2024 $52,639; 23.0% up
You get the same if you choose 2010 (pre-Brexit referenda, pre-announcement, pre-swings) as a benchmark too. Same 2024 figures for each obviously:
Germany 2010 $42,409; 31.6% up Eurozone 2010 $37,496; 27.3% up UK 2010 $39,599; 32.9% up
Either way the UK has outgrown both Germany and the Euro Area as a whole. "Despite Brexit".
Why ignore the non Euro states I wonder? We all know what you're trying to do.
The non-Euro states are primarily not our peers, though I doubt it changes the outcome, not trying to do anything by not looking at them.
Though if your argument is that the EU's primary policy is such a dismal failure we need to look at those outside of it, then that's an interesting argument.
the other week you were arguing geography doesn't matter, now you've changed your tune, try to be consistent
Geography does not matter.
Our peer nations are first-world, developed nations. France, Germany, Canada, Australia, NZ etc.
Not Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary.
Are Denmark and Sweden not our peers?
They are, they're just very small. Including them doesn't change the data.
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
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 for EU' in every cupboard
A concession to open borders in NI, something you people claimed brexit would destroy.
Not required under Theresa May's deal, which you lot voted down just to show off.
Also not required under Starmer's putative phytosanitary deal which does not involve rejoining.
I will admit that simpletons thinking "Not for EU" means "worse food standards than EU" is an image problem.
well quite, it's an entirely pointless exercise that has accomplished nothing except to make us all a little poorer.
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
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.
Yes, as a fact.
Obviously 2016 is a flawed benchmark, because of the wild swings in exchange rates due to the debate and referendum etc distorting the markets, but whether you choose a pre-referenda starting point of 2010, or a pre-Brexit starting point of 2018, the UK has as a matter of fact grown more per capita than either Germany or the Euro Area.
Germany 2018 $47,624; 2024 $55,800; 17.2% up Eurozone 2018 $39,213; 2024 $47,724; 21.7% up UK 2018 $42,794; 2024 $52,639; 23.0% up
You get the same if you choose 2010 (pre-Brexit referenda, pre-announcement, pre-swings) as a benchmark too. Same 2024 figures for each obviously:
Germany 2010 $42,409; 31.6% up Eurozone 2010 $37,496; 27.3% up UK 2010 $39,599; 32.9% up
Either way the UK has outgrown both Germany and the Euro Area as a whole. "Despite Brexit".
UK had it stayed inside the UK 2018 $42,794; 2024 $55,632; 30.0% up
[Citation needed]
What evidence for that, and what utterly BS assumptions underpin it?
Presumably just exchange rate maths (so irrelevant)
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
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
Other remainer posters today have used the opposite argument: we must use 2016 because that's when the damage started. Investment uncertainty and so on. Pick the date you like, so long as it's consistent.
The sensible date to choose is preceding the referendum, eg 2010. Because the wild swings in 2015/2016 distorted the data, whereas preceding it to after it eliminates those wild swings and just leaves the overall effect.
And the overall effect is that the UK has grown by more. Had we suffered, we'd have grown by less.
2018 to date shows the same thing. Cherrypicking a date distorted by wild swings that have reversed is silly.
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
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 is not the only, or probably main cause of an increase in racist langauge. The West is seeing an unprecedented (for modern times) wave of people from different cultures. Not everyone likes it. If anything Brexit was a response to that, rather than being a cause of racism in itself.
Brexit, as defined by the narrow vision of economics, is probably a failure at the current time. Might not be in ten or twenty years. But Brexit was never solely about economics.
That comes dangerously close to victim blaming in my view. If only brown people didn't exist, there wouldn't be any racism. The Brexit campaign made it acceptable to blame all our ills on "foreign" influences and encouraged people to think they could start making people "go home". It played a big role in putting us in the horrible place we find ourselves in now. Farage and his ilk are poison and always have been.
I'm sorry if you don't like it, but a majority of the electorate should set immigration policy - it has that right in a democracy.
If you don't like the way things are going, rally people to your perspective, don't bemoan the fact that people have been encouraged to excerise their democratic rights.
The UKs growth since leaving the EU compares favourably with other larger countries of the remaining 27 .
The UKs growth would be even better if it had stayed in the EU .
Indeed, and the first is a fact.
The second is not. Indeed for the decades pre-Brexit we were growing comparably with the other larger countries, not massively outperforming them, so its hubristic to assume we'd have outperformed them by even more.
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
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 is not the only, or probably main cause of an increase in racist langauge. The West is seeing an unprecedented (for modern times) wave of people from different cultures. Not everyone likes it. If anything Brexit was a response to that, rather than being a cause of racism in itself.
Brexit, as defined by the narrow vision of economics, is probably a failure at the current time. Might not be in ten or twenty years. But Brexit was never solely about economics.
That comes dangerously close to victim blaming in my view. If only brown people didn't exist, there wouldn't be any racism. The Brexit campaign made it acceptable to blame all our ills on "foreign" influences and encouraged people to think they could start making people "go home". It played a big role in putting us in the horrible place we find ourselves in now. Farage and his ilk are poison and always have been.
Nah it’s only really been since first Corbyn and now Trump. It’s that plus social media (plus Farage but he was more of a baseline nastiness than the upsurge we’ve seen in the last few years)
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
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.
Yes, as a fact.
Obviously 2016 is a flawed benchmark, because of the wild swings in exchange rates due to the debate and referendum etc distorting the markets, but whether you choose a pre-referenda starting point of 2010, or a pre-Brexit starting point of 2018, the UK has as a matter of fact grown more per capita than either Germany or the Euro Area.
Germany 2018 $47,624; 2024 $55,800; 17.2% up Eurozone 2018 $39,213; 2024 $47,724; 21.7% up UK 2018 $42,794; 2024 $52,639; 23.0% up
You get the same if you choose 2010 (pre-Brexit referenda, pre-announcement, pre-swings) as a benchmark too. Same 2024 figures for each obviously:
Germany 2010 $42,409; 31.6% up Eurozone 2010 $37,496; 27.3% up UK 2010 $39,599; 32.9% up
Either way the UK has outgrown both Germany and the Euro Area as a whole. "Despite Brexit".
UK had it stayed inside the UK 2018 $42,794; 2024 $55,632; 30.0% up
[Citation needed]
What evidence for that, and what utterly BS assumptions underpin it?
Presumably just exchange rate maths (so irrelevant)
Nah I just slapped 30% on. Unless you can provide a counterfactual you can't measure Brexit, so I'm going with 30% till proven otherwise.
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
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.
Yes, as a fact.
Obviously 2016 is a flawed benchmark, because of the wild swings in exchange rates due to the debate and referendum etc distorting the markets, but whether you choose a pre-referenda starting point of 2010, or a pre-Brexit starting point of 2018, the UK has as a matter of fact grown more per capita than either Germany or the Euro Area.
Germany 2018 $47,624; 2024 $55,800; 17.2% up Eurozone 2018 $39,213; 2024 $47,724; 21.7% up UK 2018 $42,794; 2024 $52,639; 23.0% up
You get the same if you choose 2010 (pre-Brexit referenda, pre-announcement, pre-swings) as a benchmark too. Same 2024 figures for each obviously:
Germany 2010 $42,409; 31.6% up Eurozone 2010 $37,496; 27.3% up UK 2010 $39,599; 32.9% up
Either way the UK has outgrown both Germany and the Euro Area as a whole. "Despite Brexit".
Why ignore the non Euro states I wonder? We all know what you're trying to do.
The non-Euro states are primarily not our peers, though I doubt it changes the outcome, not trying to do anything by not looking at them.
Though if your argument is that the EU's primary policy is such a dismal failure we need to look at those outside of it, then that's an interesting argument.
the other week you were arguing geography doesn't matter, now you've changed your tune, try to be consistent
Geography does not matter.
Our peer nations are first-world, developed nations. France, Germany, Canada, Australia, NZ etc.
Not Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary.
Are Denmark and Sweden not our peers?
Not really, although they are closer.
Our European peers are the big 5 - France, Germany, Italy, Spain (and the UK). All large, mature, post industrial social democracies
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
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.
Yes, as a fact.
Obviously 2016 is a flawed benchmark, because of the wild swings in exchange rates due to the debate and referendum etc distorting the markets, but whether you choose a pre-referenda starting point of 2010, or a pre-Brexit starting point of 2018, the UK has as a matter of fact grown more per capita than either Germany or the Euro Area.
Germany 2018 $47,624; 2024 $55,800; 17.2% up Eurozone 2018 $39,213; 2024 $47,724; 21.7% up UK 2018 $42,794; 2024 $52,639; 23.0% up
You get the same if you choose 2010 (pre-Brexit referenda, pre-announcement, pre-swings) as a benchmark too. Same 2024 figures for each obviously:
Germany 2010 $42,409; 31.6% up Eurozone 2010 $37,496; 27.3% up UK 2010 $39,599; 32.9% up
Either way the UK has outgrown both Germany and the Euro Area as a whole. "Despite Brexit".
UK had it stayed inside the UK 2018 $42,794; 2024 $55,632; 30.0% up
[Citation needed]
What evidence for that, and what utterly BS assumptions underpin it?
Presumably just exchange rate maths (so irrelevant)
Nah I just slapped 30% on. Unless you can provide a counterfactual you can't measure Brexit, so I'm going with 30% till proven otherwise.
Germany is the closest we have to a counterfactual, as is the Euro Area. We've beaten them both.
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
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?
The fact is, the British public screwed up. Maybe it was really the fault of Cameron (Eton College and Oxford University), Johnson (Eton and Oxford) and Farage (Dulwich College and Coutts), who are definitely not elites thanks to their referendum.
The good old public didn't screw up. The screw ups were two fold: not asking our referendum consent as the European project developed as a number of other countries did, and we were sometimes promised; this allowed the EU to take a shape which when in a majority wanted to be out, and when out a majority want to be in.
The second screw up was the parliament/government managing of the Brexit process without a proper plan, and changing PM at the absolute moment he had to stay to see through his own decision to hold a referendum.
Dave, having walked off, should have walked off into the sunset.
But- had he stayed on- what could he have done that TM didn't do and get destroyed for?
Well he had a majority to work with.
Also May insisted that Brexit meant a hard break. Cameron could have kept the single market- which Dan Hannan always insisted was not under threat.
The blindingly obvious solution was a two speed Europe - an economic set up without the political / immigration aspects. And a harder core of countries on the path to political union.
But politicians on all sides were not flexible enough to get there
Well, to a certain extent, that two-speed Europe already exists, with the Eurozone not encompassing every EU country. By and large everyone doesn't like it. The countries inside the Eurozone prefer the countries outside would join the Eurozone. The countries outside the Eurozone fear the Eurozone countries voting as a bloc. Neither want more things related to the EU to be Eurozone-only integrations that deepen the divide between Eurozone and non-Eurozone countries.
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
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.
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
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
Other remainer posters today have used the opposite argument: we must use 2016 because that's when the damage started. Investment uncertainty and so on. Pick the date you like, so long as it's consistent.
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
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 is not the only, or probably main cause of an increase in racist langauge. The West is seeing an unprecedented (for modern times) wave of people from different cultures. Not everyone likes it. If anything Brexit was a response to that, rather than being a cause of racism in itself.
Brexit, as defined by the narrow vision of economics, is probably a failure at the current time. Might not be in ten or twenty years. But Brexit was never solely about economics.
That comes dangerously close to victim blaming in my view. If only brown people didn't exist, there wouldn't be any racism. The Brexit campaign made it acceptable to blame all our ills on "foreign" influences and encouraged people to think they could start making people "go home". It played a big role in putting us in the horrible place we find ourselves in now. Farage and his ilk are poison and always have been.
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
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 is not the only, or probably main cause of an increase in racist langauge. The West is seeing an unprecedented (for modern times) wave of people from different cultures. Not everyone likes it. If anything Brexit was a response to that, rather than being a cause of racism in itself.
Brexit, as defined by the narrow vision of economics, is probably a failure at the current time. Might not be in ten or twenty years. But Brexit was never solely about economics.
That comes dangerously close to victim blaming in my view. If only brown people didn't exist, there wouldn't be any racism. The Brexit campaign made it acceptable to blame all our ills on "foreign" influences and encouraged people to think they could start making people "go home". It played a big role in putting us in the horrible place we find ourselves in now. Farage and his ilk are poison and always have been.
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
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 for EU' in every cupboard
A concession to open borders in NI, something you people claimed brexit would destroy.
Not required under Theresa May's deal, which you lot voted down just to show off.
Also not required under Starmer's putative phytosanitary deal which does not involve rejoining.
I will admit that simpletons thinking "Not for EU" means "worse food standards than EU" is an image problem.
A concession to open borders in NI, something you people claimed brexit would destroy.
That it would destroy either the open NI border with ROI or with GB, which is what happened.
Not required under Theresa May's deal, which you lot voted down just to show off.
True, but so did the ERG, who I'd argue would have had to support whatever deal we ended up with, or they would have just carried on after we left, constantly causing trouble saying "This isn't the Brexit we voted for".
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
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.
Yes, as a fact.
Obviously 2016 is a flawed benchmark, because of the wild swings in exchange rates due to the debate and referendum etc distorting the markets, but whether you choose a pre-referenda starting point of 2010, or a pre-Brexit starting point of 2018, the UK has as a matter of fact grown more per capita than either Germany or the Euro Area.
Germany 2018 $47,624; 2024 $55,800; 17.2% up Eurozone 2018 $39,213; 2024 $47,724; 21.7% up UK 2018 $42,794; 2024 $52,639; 23.0% up
You get the same if you choose 2010 (pre-Brexit referenda, pre-announcement, pre-swings) as a benchmark too. Same 2024 figures for each obviously:
Germany 2010 $42,409; 31.6% up Eurozone 2010 $37,496; 27.3% up UK 2010 $39,599; 32.9% up
Either way the UK has outgrown both Germany and the Euro Area as a whole. "Despite Brexit".
UK had it stayed inside the UK 2018 $42,794; 2024 $55,632; 30.0% up
[Citation needed]
What evidence for that, and what utterly BS assumptions underpin it?
Presumably just exchange rate maths (so irrelevant)
Nah I just slapped 30% on. Unless you can provide a counterfactual you can't measure Brexit, so I'm going with 30% till proven otherwise.
Germany is the closest we have to a counterfactual, as is the Euro Area. We've beaten them both.
Germany would have grown by 50% if it weren't for Ukraine.
How about: a) we all agree to courteously disagree about Brexit and call a truce b) we all agree never to mention it again on this splendid forum? Please.
Perhaps if we could just get another 5,241 Brexit posts in before the year end, one reader might possibly consider changing their mind.
I am sorry for the part I have played in this. I broke my rule of not participating in discussions that have been brought across from a previous thread.
How about: a) we all agree to courteously disagree about Brexit and call a truce b) we all agree never to mention it again on this splendid forum? Please.
Comments
Every other EU nation had votes of their populace when major changes happened. We didn’t.
The second screw up was the parliament/government managing of the Brexit process without a proper plan, and changing PM at the absolute moment he had to stay to see through his own decision to hold a referendum.
For elections to Parliament, and (effectively) choosing a Prime Minister, we set the time limit at five years. A referendum is different, and probably does cast a longer shadow. But it's not infinite. (And Wilson had an EEC referendum 2.5 years after the UK had joined.)
If I didn't have a really demanding job, I'd probably take a shot at it.
Bear in mind you can only say Leave or Remain.
Hopefully I didn't get too ripped off.
But- had he stayed on- what could he have done that TM didn't do and get destroyed for?
That famous tome, Britannia Unchained might need a sequel - Britannia Adrift and all at Sea. On which shores we will end up needs some consideration.
Brexit, as defined by the narrow vision of economics, is probably a failure at the current time. Might not be in ten or twenty years. But Brexit was never solely about economics.
With hindsight, our biggest mistake was to start being moralistic about our main competitive advantage in finance which previously made London the natural home for all the world's dodgy money. That's why perhaps the most encouraging thing about the prospect of a Farage government is that he could correct this mistake and let Britain get back to doing what it does best.
And insurance is at odds with the rules about MOTs where is is *not* an offence to own a car where the MOT has expired.
These have not changed since 2016. The trade and other advantages are obvious, as is the importance post-Trumpism of big global powers, of which the EU is one, hanging together. So we have to be in.
But, as we may have noticed, nothing since 2016 has made it any less politically essential to control our own borders. Which is why Starmer/Mahmood sounds like Reform on the subject. So we have to be out.
Perhaps it's you that doesn't believe in democracy ?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Referendums_related_to_the_European_Union
https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/51484-how-do-britons-feel-about-brexit-five-years-on
The comparison with Wilson is however misleading. He had the vote because Heath had not been honest enough to allow one before taking us in to the EEC.
Mind you, I will repeat my point of a few days ago. Why on earth would the EU be interested in letting us back in as long as there is the prospect of a Reform government in a few years? A prospect which, in all likelihood, would increase if Starmer pitches for revisiting Brexit.
It seems this new found freedom has given us an identity crisis being neither European, or the 51st State. We better develop some idea of where we want to be or we'll end up like Austria bemoaning the loss of an empire.
EXC
@theipaper
UK heading for another showdown with EU over Brussels' protectionist turn
🇪🇺 is pushing 'buy European' strategy for tech/AI and tighter rules on manufacturing imports
Experts tell me this looks like a breach of post-Brexit trade deal with 🇬🇧
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.
And Europe has languished in economic stagnation for the past 30 years. Eurosclerosis was not caused by Brexit.
Drama charting Margaret Thatcher's astonishing fall from power, one of the most extraordinary stories of political assassination the world has seen. It took only 11 days for Thatcher to go from being the most powerful woman in the world to the tearful figure in the back of the car - a major tragedy in the true Shakespearean sense. We watch a woman lose the one thing she really cares about - power - changing from leader to victim before our eyes.
12 November 1990: As Thatcher prepares for her speech at the Lord Mayor's banquet at the Guildhall, Geoffrey Howe, her quietly spoken former foreign secretary and chancellor, pens the resignation speech that will stun the country and seal her fate. The next day, Howe makes his lethal speech in the Houses of Parliament, and the final ten days of Margaret Thatcher's reign begin
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00hy18h/margaret
Perhaps its made us richer?
Obviously 2016 is a flawed benchmark, because of the wild swings in exchange rates due to the debate and referendum etc distorting the markets, but whether you choose a pre-referenda starting point of 2010, or a pre-Brexit starting point of 2018, the UK has as a matter of fact grown more per capita than either Germany or the Euro Area.
Germany 2018 $47,624; 2024 $55,800; 17.2% up
Eurozone 2018 $39,213; 2024 $47,724; 21.7% up
UK 2018 $42,794; 2024 $52,639; 23.0% up
You get the same if you choose 2010 (pre-Brexit referenda, pre-announcement, pre-swings) as a benchmark too. Same 2024 figures for each obviously:
Germany 2010 $42,409; 31.6% up
Eurozone 2010 $37,496; 27.3% up
UK 2010 $39,599; 32.9% up
Either way the UK has outgrown both Germany and the Euro Area as a whole. "Despite Brexit".
Though if your argument is that the EU's primary policy is such a dismal failure we need to look at those outside of it, then that's an interesting argument.
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
What evidence for that, and what utterly BS assumptions underpin it?
Our peer nations are first-world, developed nations. France, Germany, Canada, Australia, NZ etc.
Not Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary.
Not required under Theresa May's deal, which you lot voted down just to show off.
Also not required under Starmer's putative phytosanitary deal which does not involve rejoining.
I will admit that simpletons thinking "Not for EU" means "worse food standards than EU" is an image problem.
But politicians on all sides were not flexible enough to get there
It is hubristic to believe were it not for Brexit we'd have outgrown them by even more.
The UKs growth since leaving the EU compares favourably with other larger countries of the remaining 27 .
The UKs growth would be even better if it had stayed in the EU .
Let us see if that still stands come next summer.
European stagnation long preceded Brexit. The EU is failing to generate growth. As an actual fact, not a hypothetical theory.
And the overall effect is that the UK has grown by more. Had we suffered, we'd have grown by less.
2018 to date shows the same thing. Cherrypicking a date distorted by wild swings that have reversed is silly.
If you don't like the way things are going, rally people to your perspective, don't bemoan the fact that people have been encouraged to excerise their democratic rights.
The second is not. Indeed for the decades pre-Brexit we were growing comparably with the other larger countries, not massively outperforming them, so its hubristic to assume we'd have outperformed them by even more.
Our European peers are the big 5 - France, Germany, Italy, Spain (and the UK). All large, mature, post industrial social democracies
It's another fantasy solution.
The impact of the Brexit referendum was felt right away.
That it would destroy either the open NI border with ROI or with GB, which is what happened.
Not required under Theresa May's deal, which you lot voted down just to show off.
True, but so did the ERG, who I'd argue would have had to support whatever deal we ended up with, or they would have just carried on after we left, constantly causing trouble saying "This isn't the Brexit we voted for".
a) we all agree to courteously disagree about Brexit and call a truce
b) we all agree never to mention it again on this splendid forum?
Please.