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.
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.
My EMA (Exponential Moving Average with weight 10%) takes account of recency. I suspect the partisan lean will tend to cancel out.
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.
I gave a logic for the dates I chose and it was not to cook the books, remotely. To measure the change of an effect you need to choose a date before the effect begins, 2016 data was wildly distorted so is a flawed starting point as too would be 2020 (due to Covid) etc.
If I'd wanted to cook the books, I would have chosen 2011 as a starting date, but I did not.
You can choose any other appropriate date and its the same, because reality is the same. From before Brexit (implementation/referendum) to date the UK has grown by more.
Indeed looking back the past 15 years, the UK has grown by the most from 10/15 starting points, Germany from 1/15 and the Euro Area from 4/15.
2015/16 is distorted by German data collapsing and the UK supposedly being richer than Germany per capita, data not seen before or since, which is patently false.
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.
We are just 6 months short of the 10th anniversary.
The polling shows by a substantial majority that the public thinks it the wrong decision.
And looks like it will back Farage's impeccable judgement at the Locals, Welsh and Scottish elections a few weeks before.
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.
I gave a logic for the dates I chose and it was not to cook the books, remotely. To measure the change of an effect you need to choose a date before the effect begins, 2016 data was wildly distorted so is a flawed starting point as too would be 2020 (due to Covid) etc.
If I'd wanted to cook the books, I would have chosen 2011 as a starting date, but I did not.
You can choose any other appropriate date and its the same, because reality is the same. From before Brexit (implementation/referendum) to date the UK has grown by more.
Indeed looking back the past 15 years, the UK has grown by the most from 10/15 starting points, Germany from 1/15 and the Euro Area from 4/15.
2015/16 is distorted by German data collapsing and the UK supposedly being richer than Germany per capita, data not seen before or since, which is patently false.
I've lost the will to enter more spreadsheet data tbh.
One thing that puzzles me, though, about all these figures is they all (UK, Germany, Eurozone) indicate reasonable GDP per capita growth over the past 10--15 years, whichever date range you use.
Why then is the general mood so low and the population so pissed off?
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.
I gave a logic for the dates I chose and it was not to cook the books, remotely. To measure the change of an effect you need to choose a date before the effect begins, 2016 data was wildly distorted so is a flawed starting point as too would be 2020 (due to Covid) etc.
If I'd wanted to cook the books, I would have chosen 2011 as a starting date, but I did not.
You can choose any other appropriate date and its the same, because reality is the same. From before Brexit (implementation/referendum) to date the UK has grown by more.
Indeed looking back the past 15 years, the UK has grown by the most from 10/15 starting points, Germany from 1/15 and the Euro Area from 4/15.
2015/16 is distorted by German data collapsing and the UK supposedly being richer than Germany per capita, data not seen before or since, which is patently false.
I've lost the will to enter more spreadsheet data tbh.
One thing that puzzles me, though, about all these figures is they all (UK, Germany, Eurozone) indicate reasonable GDP per capita growth over the past 10--15 years, whichever date range you use.
Why then is the general mood so low and the population so pissed off?
Because the top 1% have taken half the growth for themselves. Exacerbated by oldies insisting tax and spend favours them at the expense of younguns.
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.
I gave a logic for the dates I chose and it was not to cook the books, remotely. To measure the change of an effect you need to choose a date before the effect begins, 2016 data was wildly distorted so is a flawed starting point as too would be 2020 (due to Covid) etc.
If I'd wanted to cook the books, I would have chosen 2011 as a starting date, but I did not.
You can choose any other appropriate date and its the same, because reality is the same. From before Brexit (implementation/referendum) to date the UK has grown by more.
Indeed looking back the past 15 years, the UK has grown by the most from 10/15 starting points, Germany from 1/15 and the Euro Area from 4/15.
2015/16 is distorted by German data collapsing and the UK supposedly being richer than Germany per capita, data not seen before or since, which is patently false.
I've lost the will to enter more spreadsheet data tbh.
One thing that puzzles me, though, about all these figures is they all (UK, Germany, Eurozone) indicate reasonable GDP per capita growth over the past 10--15 years, whichever date range you use.
Why then is the general mood so low and the population so pissed off?
Greater equality is a double whammy: it makes people feel poorer and it makes them feel it isn't worth it to work harder. What we need to make people feel better is bigger pay differentials.
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.
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.
I gave a logic for the dates I chose and it was not to cook the books, remotely. To measure the change of an effect you need to choose a date before the effect begins, 2016 data was wildly distorted so is a flawed starting point as too would be 2020 (due to Covid) etc.
If I'd wanted to cook the books, I would have chosen 2011 as a starting date, but I did not.
You can choose any other appropriate date and its the same, because reality is the same. From before Brexit (implementation/referendum) to date the UK has grown by more.
Indeed looking back the past 15 years, the UK has grown by the most from 10/15 starting points, Germany from 1/15 and the Euro Area from 4/15.
2015/16 is distorted by German data collapsing and the UK supposedly being richer than Germany per capita, data not seen before or since, which is patently false.
I've lost the will to enter more spreadsheet data tbh.
One thing that puzzles me, though, about all these figures is they all (UK, Germany, Eurozone) indicate reasonable GDP per capita growth over the past 10--15 years, whichever date range you use.
Why then is the general mood so low and the population so pissed off?
Economic growth isn't helpful when you don't benefit from it.
When you're spending all your wages on rent and have too much month at the end of your money, you're not going to be happy.
Real tax rates on working people are too high and benefits of growth are accruing to asset holders and people who don't work for their incomes.
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.
You need to drive the car to your MOT test. You don't need a car to go online and renew your insurance.
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.
You mean taking dodgy money?
Yes, crypto money, Russian oligarchs, etc. Back to the ethos of the Blair years.
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.
Sounds like seafood chowder.
Best chowder is at Moran's Oyster Cottage, Kilcolgan, Galway. Excellent Guinness too.
A trained economist, from your own side, explaining why you are wrong. I can do no more.
I think Portes is explaining why Carney (not me) was wrong on one point. (Hard to be sure though because I don't have access to the whole article.)
I think the important point is that you don't measure relative growth in economies by comparing their size in any currency other than their own. Which is what you were doing earlier by quoting GDP for Uk, france, germany in US dollars
Of course, if two countries are both in the Euro, this becomes easy. So your france-germany comparison actually makes sense. But a Uk-france or Uk-germany doesn't. Stick to GDP increases per year in toto or per capita, or PPP, or whatever. But in their own currency.
If we'd voted 52-48 to remain in the EU, it would have just accelerated Farage's rise to domestic political power.
Highly dependent on other events, that theory.
Either Farage or a Brexiteer dominated Tory party. The main point is that ~16m people voting against the status quo and narrowly losing would have profoundly changed 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?
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.
And if Cameron had invoked Article 50 straight away, as the snivelling little coward had promised in the event of a Leave vote, it would have had two positive effects: 1) it would have concentrated the Leavers' minds as to exactly what form of Brexit they wanted; and 2) it would have completely disavowed the Remainers' hopes of stopping the whole process.
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.
I gave a logic for the dates I chose and it was not to cook the books, remotely. To measure the change of an effect you need to choose a date before the effect begins, 2016 data was wildly distorted so is a flawed starting point as too would be 2020 (due to Covid) etc.
If I'd wanted to cook the books, I would have chosen 2011 as a starting date, but I did not.
You can choose any other appropriate date and its the same, because reality is the same. From before Brexit (implementation/referendum) to date the UK has grown by more.
Indeed looking back the past 15 years, the UK has grown by the most from 10/15 starting points, Germany from 1/15 and the Euro Area from 4/15.
2015/16 is distorted by German data collapsing and the UK supposedly being richer than Germany per capita, data not seen before or since, which is patently false.
I've lost the will to enter more spreadsheet data tbh.
One thing that puzzles me, though, about all these figures is they all (UK, Germany, Eurozone) indicate reasonable GDP per capita growth over the past 10--15 years, whichever date range you use.
Why then is the general mood so low and the population so pissed off?
Greater equality is a double whammy: it makes people feel poorer and it makes them feel it isn't worth it to work harder. What we need to make people feel better is bigger pay differentials.
WTAF are you talking about?
The issue is much more that inequality has grown so large numbers haven;t benefitted.
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.
While i agree that Brexit was never really about the national interest, it was about the Conservatives internal splits, nevertheless if May (or Cemeron) said that we would negotiate an economic deal, rather than go for hard Brexit, then there could have been a chance of political healing. May's "citizen of nowhere" speech destroyed any chance of a compromise and was a serious mistake.
Is Lando a good shot for the SPOTY? I didn’t realise British F1 dominance until just now - Radio said that he was only the 11th Brit to win the F1 championship so I thought I would see which countries are more successful. Basically none are close. There are a raft who have three world champions but that is the next level. In totals Britain has 21 world championships with Germany next on 12.
Anyway, congratulations to Lando, I look forward to Jackie Stewart’s excuses for picking at you if you win another couple.
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.
I gave a logic for the dates I chose and it was not to cook the books, remotely. To measure the change of an effect you need to choose a date before the effect begins, 2016 data was wildly distorted so is a flawed starting point as too would be 2020 (due to Covid) etc.
If I'd wanted to cook the books, I would have chosen 2011 as a starting date, but I did not.
You can choose any other appropriate date and its the same, because reality is the same. From before Brexit (implementation/referendum) to date the UK has grown by more.
Indeed looking back the past 15 years, the UK has grown by the most from 10/15 starting points, Germany from 1/15 and the Euro Area from 4/15.
2015/16 is distorted by German data collapsing and the UK supposedly being richer than Germany per capita, data not seen before or since, which is patently false.
I've lost the will to enter more spreadsheet data tbh.
One thing that puzzles me, though, about all these figures is they all (UK, Germany, Eurozone) indicate reasonable GDP per capita growth over the past 10--15 years, whichever date range you use.
Why then is the general mood so low and the population so pissed off?
Greater equality is a double whammy: it makes people feel poorer and it makes them feel it isn't worth it to work harder. What we need to make people feel better is bigger pay differentials.
It sets multiple tricky tests. On the right leaning half it is disliked because of its intrinsic challenge to meritocracy, the amount of benefit doled out to make it happen and the challenge it makes to assumed effortless superiority of particular ways of life. On the left leaning half it rather shows up the gap between the small leftish group who really want equality, and the majority (doctors, teachers, all trade unions etc) who want equality on condition that when the poorest start to catch up it is magically matched by their own more rapid ascent to get out of their reach again.
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.
I gave a logic for the dates I chose and it was not to cook the books, remotely. To measure the change of an effect you need to choose a date before the effect begins, 2016 data was wildly distorted so is a flawed starting point as too would be 2020 (due to Covid) etc.
If I'd wanted to cook the books, I would have chosen 2011 as a starting date, but I did not.
You can choose any other appropriate date and its the same, because reality is the same. From before Brexit (implementation/referendum) to date the UK has grown by more.
Indeed looking back the past 15 years, the UK has grown by the most from 10/15 starting points, Germany from 1/15 and the Euro Area from 4/15.
2015/16 is distorted by German data collapsing and the UK supposedly being richer than Germany per capita, data not seen before or since, which is patently false.
I've lost the will to enter more spreadsheet data tbh.
One thing that puzzles me, though, about all these figures is they all (UK, Germany, Eurozone) indicate reasonable GDP per capita growth over the past 10--15 years, whichever date range you use.
Why then is the general mood so low and the population so pissed off?
Greater equality is a double whammy: it makes people feel poorer and it makes them feel it isn't worth it to work harder. What we need to make people feel better is bigger pay differentials.
WTAF are you talking about?
The issue is much more that inequality has grown so large numbers haven;t benefitted.
Those on minimum wage have seen strong wage rises, though that's led to many being priced out of employment altogether now.
Middle incomes have been squeezed considerably closer to minimum wage though.
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.
I think next time somebody mentions Brexit I will deploy the Farage photo.
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.
I gave a logic for the dates I chose and it was not to cook the books, remotely. To measure the change of an effect you need to choose a date before the effect begins, 2016 data was wildly distorted so is a flawed starting point as too would be 2020 (due to Covid) etc.
If I'd wanted to cook the books, I would have chosen 2011 as a starting date, but I did not.
You can choose any other appropriate date and its the same, because reality is the same. From before Brexit (implementation/referendum) to date the UK has grown by more.
Indeed looking back the past 15 years, the UK has grown by the most from 10/15 starting points, Germany from 1/15 and the Euro Area from 4/15.
2015/16 is distorted by German data collapsing and the UK supposedly being richer than Germany per capita, data not seen before or since, which is patently false.
I've lost the will to enter more spreadsheet data tbh.
One thing that puzzles me, though, about all these figures is they all (UK, Germany, Eurozone) indicate reasonable GDP per capita growth over the past 10--15 years, whichever date range you use.
Why then is the general mood so low and the population so pissed off?
Greater equality is a double whammy: it makes people feel poorer and it makes them feel it isn't worth it to work harder. What we need to make people feel better is bigger pay differentials.
WTAF are you talking about?
The issue is much more that inequality has grown so large numbers haven;t benefitted.
I'm talking about the problem of wage compression. The difference between the pay someone can expect at the bottom of the scale and the pay someone can expect at the median (which increasingly means a graduate job) is getting less and less.
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.
There is a good case for not rerunning the history of 2016, but the fact we are out of the EU with a particular agreement, and have a government with a particular approach to the matter is a hot topic politically right now.
Yes we can stop talking about Brexit 2016, but often it is shorthand for the politics and economics of living in 2025 with an economic and political leviathan next door and a voting public as divided and removed from where the political parties are as they were in 2016.
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.
Sounds like seafood chowder.
Best chowder is at Moran's Oyster Cottage, Kilcolgan, Galway. Excellent Guinness too.
It is - or possibly an example of convergent evolution between skink and chaudière, as I found with a French colleague visiting Scotland. A potato, onion/leek, milk and fish combination.
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".
You are wasting your time Barty. Believing that Brexit has somehow made us poorer or that we would have exceeded EU growth not by a small margin but by an order of magnitude without it is not a matter of fact, it is a question of faith.
A comprehensive take down but not a particularly convincing one.
Neil claims that the announcement of the Treasury-funded bond selloff did not spook the markets and lead to increased bond sales - but this happened only 24 hours before the minibudget. And even if we dismiss the announcement from having any intrinsic market effects, its fiscal impact was to expose the Treasury to £80-£100bn of additional cost, and therefore borrowing, with zero economic benefit. That dwarves the so-called 'unfunded tax cuts' in the minibudget, so if the markets were untroubled by it, they can't have been paying attention.
NEW: Nigel Farage has been reported to the Met Police by a former member of his campaign team over claims of falsified election expenses in Clacton last year.
Richard Everett alleges up to £9,000 of under or misreported expenses, including to do up a Reform-themed office bar.
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
Yes, the Maastricht treaty was a masterpiece of diplomacy with its varying pillars and variable geometry. Major's greatest achievement by a distance. If the fanatics had been willing to allow that flexibility to continue we would still be in the EU. But no, they went for the Treaty of Lisbon which removed most of that flexibility and those idiots Blair and Brown gave away even the options we had. After that Brexit was frankly a matter of time.
Cameron tried to get back a slither of the flexibility given up when Brown signed Lisbon and was treated with scorn by the fanatics. Its probably just as well but it has wasted an incredible amount of energy that might have been used more productively.
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
A right-wing Prime Minister, forced to resign by the inevitability of being voted out by her backbenchers, Mrs Thatcher was very much the Liz Truss of her day.
NEW: Nigel Farage has been reported to the Met Police by a former member of his campaign team over claims of falsified election expenses in Clacton last year.
Richard Everett alleges up to £9,000 of under or misreported expenses, including to do up a Reform-themed office bar.
Yes, Nigel has never looked so vulnerable and on several fronts. If Kemi can make the kill then, even if she achieves nothing else, her status as a Tory legend will be cemented. This is high-stakes stuff here.
NEW: Nigel Farage has been reported to the Met Police by a former member of his campaign team over claims of falsified election expenses in Clacton last year.
Richard Everett alleges up to £9,000 of under or misreported expenses, including to do up a Reform-themed office bar.
Labour Together, the influential think tank that ran Sir Keir Starmer’s leadership campaign is canvassing party members on candidates to replace him
In the clearest sign yet that the Labour Party is preparing for a change of prime minister the campaign group once run by Morgan McSweeney, Starmer’s chief of staff, this weekend asked activists for their views on contenders
A survey sent to local Labour parties, seen by The Times, prompted members to name the politicians who stood “the best chance of leading Labour to electoral victory at the next general election” compared with Starmer and to rank those they would be likely to vote for in a leadership election
Eight senior Labour politicians were named alongside Starmer. The five cabinet ministers in the survey are Wes Streeting, the health secretary; Shabana Mahmood, the home secretary; Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary; Ed Miliband, the energy secretary; and Darren Jones, the chief secretary to the prime minister
Labour Together also listed Angela Rayner, the former deputy prime minister; Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester; and Lucy Powell, who was elected deputy leader of the Labour Party in October
Respondents to the online questionnaire, who were offered entry into a £500 cash draw for their responses, were invited to place each politician on a “left-right scale” of “very left wing” to “very right wing”
The survey ended with a series of hypothetical head-to-head leadership choices
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".
You are wasting your time Barty. Believing that Brexit has somehow made us poorer or that we would have exceeded EU growth not by a small margin but by an order of magnitude without it is not a matter of fact, it is a question of faith.
The most malign consequence of "fuck the experts" was that in the event subsequent analysis found that Brexit had damaged the economy, the same mantra could be repeated. A self-reinforcing loop.
NEW: Nigel Farage has been reported to the Met Police by a former member of his campaign team over claims of falsified election expenses in Clacton last year.
Richard Everett alleges up to £9,000 of under or misreported expenses, including to do up a Reform-themed office bar.
NEW: Nigel Farage has been reported to the Met Police by a former member of his campaign team over claims of falsified election expenses in Clacton last year.
Richard Everett alleges up to £9,000 of under or misreported expenses, including to do up a Reform-themed office bar.
Is there a concerted effort within Reform to bin Farage? I'd seen whispers about Kruger but... really?
Nigel's standing with the pro-Jewish elements within the British Right must be in tatters. This is vitally important as Reform will find itself subject to a pro-Jewish pincer movement from both Kemi and Tommy. Reform might soon have to make some tough choices.
NEW: Nigel Farage has been reported to the Met Police by a former member of his campaign team over claims of falsified election expenses in Clacton last year.
Richard Everett alleges up to £9,000 of under or misreported expenses, including to do up a Reform-themed office bar.
Who's "they"? His own campaign team? If his own campaign team are out to get him, I think that's probably on Farage.
This seems to strengthen Farage to me.
It's quite obviously politically/revenge motivated, and frankly nobody gives a monkeys whether Nigel declared £9000 of election expenses. It won't bring him down, but it does make him look like the victim of a witchhunt. If anything, it weakens the case of the childhood racism and Russia stories - both of which had the potential to be disquieting, and lumps them all into the perception of a barrage of excrement being chucked at Nigel by a desperate political class.
Greens tend not to mix well with fruit and nuts. Better in separate courses.
Don't know. MY mum's neighbour made salad with lettuce, sultanas, and chopped orange, and possibly nuts as well (memory is faint). Apart from the Trussism, the LD element might well bear fruit in the future.
NEW: Nigel Farage has been reported to the Met Police by a former member of his campaign team over claims of falsified election expenses in Clacton last year.
Richard Everett alleges up to £9,000 of under or misreported expenses, including to do up a Reform-themed office bar.
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?
Greens tend not to mix well with fruit and nuts. Better in separate courses.
Don't know. MY mum's neighbour made salad with lettuce, sultanas, and chopped orange, and possibly nuts as well (memory is faint). Apart from the Trussism, the LD element might well bear fruit in the future.
A Waldorf salad is greens mixed with fruit and nuts.
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.
Greens tend not to mix well with fruit and nuts. Better in separate courses.
Don't know. MY mum's neighbour made salad with lettuce, sultanas, and chopped orange, and possibly nuts as well (memory is faint). Apart from the Trussism, the LD element might well bear fruit in the future.
A Waldorf salad is greens mixed with fruit and nuts.
“Waldorf salad. I think we're just out of Waldorfs.”
Greens tend not to mix well with fruit and nuts. Better in separate courses.
Don't know. MY mum's neighbour made salad with lettuce, sultanas, and chopped orange, and possibly nuts as well (memory is faint). Apart from the Trussism, the LD element might well bear fruit in the future.
A Waldorf salad is greens mixed with fruit and nuts.
(Reuters) - The Kremlin on Sunday welcomed U.S. President Donald Trump's new national security strategy and said it largely accorded with Russia's own perceptions, the first time that Moscow has so fulsomely praised such a document from its former Cold War foe.
The U.S. National Security Strategy described Trump's vision as one of "flexible realism" and argued that the U.S. should revive the 19th century Monroe Doctrine, which declared the Western Hemisphere to be Washington's zone of influence.
The strategy, signed by Trump, also warned that Europe faces "civilizational erasure", that it was a "core" U.S. interest to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine, and that Washington wanted to reestablish strategic stability with Russia.
"The adjustments that we see correspond in many ways to our vision," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told state television reporter Pavel Zarubin when asked about the new U.S. strategy.
(Reuters) - The Kremlin on Sunday welcomed U.S. President Donald Trump's new national security strategy and said it largely accorded with Russia's own perceptions, the first time that Moscow has so fulsomely praised such a document from its former Cold War foe.
The U.S. National Security Strategy described Trump's vision as one of "flexible realism" and argued that the U.S. should revive the 19th century Monroe Doctrine, which declared the Western Hemisphere to be Washington's zone of influence.
The strategy, signed by Trump, also warned that Europe faces "civilizational erasure", that it was a "core" U.S. interest to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine, and that Washington wanted to reestablish strategic stability with Russia.
"The adjustments that we see correspond in many ways to our vision," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told state television reporter Pavel Zarubin when asked about the new U.S. strategy.
The US energy system is sorted for the future if they can find a way to attach generators to the amount of American statesmen who are spinning in their graves at the surrender to Russia and their values that’s going on.
Greens tend not to mix well with fruit and nuts. Better in separate courses.
Don't know. MY mum's neighbour made salad with lettuce, sultanas, and chopped orange, and possibly nuts as well (memory is faint). Apart from the Trussism, the LD element might well bear fruit in the future.
A Waldorf salad is greens mixed with fruit and nuts.
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
A right-wing Prime Minister, forced to resign by the inevitability of being voted out by her backbenchers, Mrs Thatcher was very much the Liz Truss of her day.
I would be more interested on a program on the rise of Thatcher - as EdSec, replacing Heath, forming a policy platform in opposition - far more than yet another one on her fall.
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".
You are wasting your time Barty. Believing that Brexit has somehow made us poorer or that we would have exceeded EU growth not by a small margin but by an order of magnitude without it is not a matter of fact, it is a question of faith.
The most malign consequence of "fuck the experts" was that in the event subsequent analysis found that Brexit had damaged the economy, the same mantra could be repeated. A self-reinforcing loop.
That "analysis" has been thoroughly debunked, it relied upon absurd assumptions that the UK would grow comparably to the United States as a benchmark, despite the fact the UK has not grown comparably to the USA for decades and nor has any other European nation.
Is Lando a good shot for the SPOTY? I didn’t realise British F1 dominance until just now - Radio said that he was only the 11th Brit to win the F1 championship so I thought I would see which countries are more successful. Basically none are close. There are a raft who have three world champions but that is the next level. In totals Britain has 21 world championships with Germany next on 12.
Anyway, congratulations to Lando, I look forward to Jackie Stewart’s excuses for picking at you if you win another couple.
F1 pretends to be an international sport, but it's very UK dominated when you look closely. We have the most championships by a mile, 11 of the 35 champions are British and 8 of the 10 teams (9 of 11 next year) are either wholly or partly based in the UK.
The last time a driver from a team not based in the UK won the driver's championship was 2007.
Labour Together, the influential think tank that ran Sir Keir Starmer’s leadership campaign is canvassing party members on candidates to replace him
In the clearest sign yet that the Labour Party is preparing for a change of prime minister the campaign group once run by Morgan McSweeney, Starmer’s chief of staff, this weekend asked activists for their views on contenders
A survey sent to local Labour parties, seen by The Times, prompted members to name the politicians who stood “the best chance of leading Labour to electoral victory at the next general election” compared with Starmer and to rank those they would be likely to vote for in a leadership election
Eight senior Labour politicians were named alongside Starmer. The five cabinet ministers in the survey are Wes Streeting, the health secretary; Shabana Mahmood, the home secretary; Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary; Ed Miliband, the energy secretary; and Darren Jones, the chief secretary to the prime minister
Labour Together also listed Angela Rayner, the former deputy prime minister; Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester; and Lucy Powell, who was elected deputy leader of the Labour Party in October
Respondents to the online questionnaire, who were offered entry into a £500 cash draw for their responses, were invited to place each politician on a “left-right scale” of “very left wing” to “very right wing”
The survey ended with a series of hypothetical head-to-head leadership choices
I knew he was ill, but very sad. He was a brilliant photographer. My favourite of his books is "Small World" about the impact of tourism. It encoraged me to include other tourists in photos rather than being exasperated at them.
This is exactly what it says it is. Postcards of civic centres, holiday camps, new towns, even car parks and motorway service centres. The modest aspiration and belief in the future gives them a tragic pathos.
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?
NEW: Nigel Farage has been reported to the Met Police by a former member of his campaign team over claims of falsified election expenses in Clacton last year.
Richard Everett alleges up to £9,000 of under or misreported expenses, including to do up a Reform-themed office bar.
Is Lando a good shot for the SPOTY? I didn’t realise British F1 dominance until just now - Radio said that he was only the 11th Brit to win the F1 championship so I thought I would see which countries are more successful. Basically none are close. There are a raft who have three world champions but that is the next level. In totals Britain has 21 world championships with Germany next on 12.
Anyway, congratulations to Lando, I look forward to Jackie Stewart’s excuses for picking at you if you win another couple.
SPotY is a market I steer clear of since so much depends on the BBC's nomination list which in some years tends to the eccentric.
Looking at Betfair, Rory McIlroy is odds-on, Lando 7/2, Chloe Kelly 9/2, any price the rest. Lioness Chloe has traded shorter and her early backers will be nursing burnt fingers. Ellie was rugby's hope but now they can't give her away at over 100/1. 40/1 Luke Littler might have been in with a shout but has been nominated again for Young SPotY which he won last year. Cynical darts fans might call this sabotage but he was runner-up in 2024.
I'd be inclined to wait for the shortlist in a winning year for the women's football and rugby teams, the men's rugby team, golfers in the Ryder Cup and of course Rory completing his grand slam, and Lando today. Having said that, my sense is that Rory looks too short.
Hmm. The Betfair forum suggests SPotY and Formula 1 share a production company, which might be worth a few points to Norris as they should have some good footage. See, now you are talking me into it.
Greens tend not to mix well with fruit and nuts. Better in separate courses.
Don't know. MY mum's neighbour made salad with lettuce, sultanas, and chopped orange, and possibly nuts as well (memory is faint). Apart from the Trussism, the LD element might well bear fruit in the future.
A Waldorf salad is greens mixed with fruit and nuts.
Greens tend not to mix well with fruit and nuts. Better in separate courses.
Don't know. MY mum's neighbour made salad with lettuce, sultanas, and chopped orange, and possibly nuts as well (memory is faint). Apart from the Trussism, the LD element might well bear fruit in the future.
A Waldorf salad is greens mixed with fruit and nuts.
Greens tend not to mix well with fruit and nuts. Better in separate courses.
Don't know. MY mum's neighbour made salad with lettuce, sultanas, and chopped orange, and possibly nuts as well (memory is faint). Apart from the Trussism, the LD element might well bear fruit in the future.
A Waldorf salad is greens mixed with fruit and nuts.
Is that what you serve at your parties?
American food ? Surely not.
Well, we wouldn't want Your Party to appear pro-Russian.
So you're right, serving American food would be a serious error.
Is Lando a good shot for the SPOTY? I didn’t realise British F1 dominance until just now - Radio said that he was only the 11th Brit to win the F1 championship so I thought I would see which countries are more successful. Basically none are close. There are a raft who have three world champions but that is the next level. In totals Britain has 21 world championships with Germany next on 12.
Anyway, congratulations to Lando, I look forward to Jackie Stewart’s excuses for picking at you if you win another couple.
SPotY is a market I steer clear of since so much depends on the BBC's nomination list which in some years tends to the eccentric.
Looking at Betfair, Rory McIlroy is odds-on, Lando 7/2, Chloe Kelly 9/2, any price the rest. Lioness Chloe has traded shorter and her early backers will be nursing burnt fingers. Ellie was rugby's hope but now they can't give her away at over 100/1. 40/1 Luke Littler might have been in with a shout but has been nominated again for Young SPotY which he won last year. Cynical darts fans might call this sabotage but he was runner-up in 2024.
I'd be inclined to wait for the shortlist in a winning year for the women's football and rugby teams, the men's rugby team, golfers in the Ryder Cup and of course Rory completing his grand slam, and Lando today. Having said that, my sense is that Rory looks too short.
Hmm. The Betfair forum suggests SPotY and Formula 1 share a production company, which might be worth a few points to Norris as they should have some good footage. See, now you are talking me into it.
Oh, and the last four winners have been women.
I don’t get the Rory love. He doesn’t seem like a particularly pleasant character by his alleged personal behaviour and he chooses to rep the Republic in the Olympics so clearly doesn’t see the UK as his world, yet people get very excited about him.
I think Lando has done a great thing, especially stopping Verstappen, but I don’t feel the outpouring that I felt when Lewis won his first title. I was in Switzerland at the time and basically every expat we knew were round at our house watching the race where he took the title and everyone was ecstatic - maybe years of Lewis winning has sucked the sense of excitement out of it, maybe it’s the lack of free to air coverage but it doesn’t feel like such a thing.
I only really hope that whoever wins has really done something special and is a good egg.
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
A right-wing Prime Minister, forced to resign by the inevitability of being voted out by her backbenchers, Mrs Thatcher was very much the Liz Truss of her day.
I would be more interested on a program on the rise of Thatcher - as EdSec, replacing Heath, forming a policy platform in opposition - far more than yet another one on her fall.
It's been done. The Long Walk to Finchley. It does not seem to be on iplayer but try YouTube or Netflix. From memory, it stops at her becoming an MP. That said, Margaret, the one being discussed, does include Thatcher standing against and beating Heath. The BBC released them together as a dvd box set if your Christmas list has open slots but it might take some finding.
NEW: Nigel Farage has been reported to the Met Police by a former member of his campaign team over claims of falsified election expenses in Clacton last year.
Richard Everett alleges up to £9,000 of under or misreported expenses, including to do up a Reform-themed office bar.
NEW: Nigel Farage has been reported to the Met Police by a former member of his campaign team over claims of falsified election expenses in Clacton last year.
Richard Everett alleges up to £9,000 of under or misreported expenses, including to do up a Reform-themed office bar.
Is there a concerted effort within Reform to bin Farage? I'd seen whispers about Kruger but... really?
Wouldn't that be like a concerted effort within the Catholic Church to bin the Pope? I mean, Reform c'est Farage.
Besides, even if Reform were to try to dump Farage, he still has legal ownership doesn't he? And that's before we get to the issue that NF is the only one who is able to walk the 'don't say it out loud' tightrope without falling off.
It would be as if the Pope, having been dumped, was able to take the buildings and congregations with him.
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
A right-wing Prime Minister, forced to resign by the inevitability of being voted out by her backbenchers, Mrs Thatcher was very much the Liz Truss of her day.
I would be more interested on a program on the rise of Thatcher - as EdSec, replacing Heath, forming a policy platform in opposition - far more than yet another one on her fall.
It's been done. The Long Walk to Finchley. It does not seem to be on iplayer but try YouTube or Netflix. From memory, it stops at her becoming an MP. That said, Margaret, the one being discussed, does include Thatcher standing against and beating Heath. The BBC released them together as a dvd box set if your Christmas list has open slots but it might take some finding.
Just Watch reckons The Long Walk to Finchley is on Netflix, but Margaret is not available on any service.
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
A right-wing Prime Minister, forced to resign by the inevitability of being voted out by her backbenchers, Mrs Thatcher was very much the Liz Truss of her day.
I would be more interested on a program on the rise of Thatcher - as EdSec, replacing Heath, forming a policy platform in opposition - far more than yet another one on her fall.
It's been done. The Long Walk to Finchley. It does not seem to be on iplayer but try YouTube or Netflix. From memory, it stops at her becoming an MP. That said, Margaret, the one being discussed, does include Thatcher standing against and beating Heath. The BBC released them together as a dvd box set if your Christmas list has open slots but it might take some finding.
Just Watch reckons The Long Walk to Finchley is on Netflix, but Margaret is not available on any service.
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
A right-wing Prime Minister, forced to resign by the inevitability of being voted out by her backbenchers, Mrs Thatcher was very much the Liz Truss of her day.
I would be more interested on a program on the rise of Thatcher - as EdSec, replacing Heath, forming a policy platform in opposition - far more than yet another one on her fall.
It's been done. The Long Walk to Finchley. It does not seem to be on iplayer but try YouTube or Netflix. From memory, it stops at her becoming an MP. That said, Margaret, the one being discussed, does include Thatcher standing against and beating Heath. The BBC released them together as a dvd box set if your Christmas list has open slots but it might take some finding.
Just Watch reckons The Long Walk to Finchley is on Netflix, but Margaret is not available on any service.
Is Lando a good shot for the SPOTY? I didn’t realise British F1 dominance until just now - Radio said that he was only the 11th Brit to win the F1 championship so I thought I would see which countries are more successful. Basically none are close. There are a raft who have three world champions but that is the next level. In totals Britain has 21 world championships with Germany next on 12.
Anyway, congratulations to Lando, I look forward to Jackie Stewart’s excuses for picking at you if you win another couple.
SPotY is a market I steer clear of since so much depends on the BBC's nomination list which in some years tends to the eccentric.
Looking at Betfair, Rory McIlroy is odds-on, Lando 7/2, Chloe Kelly 9/2, any price the rest. Lioness Chloe has traded shorter and her early backers will be nursing burnt fingers. Ellie was rugby's hope but now they can't give her away at over 100/1. 40/1 Luke Littler might have been in with a shout but has been nominated again for Young SPotY which he won last year. Cynical darts fans might call this sabotage but he was runner-up in 2024.
I'd be inclined to wait for the shortlist in a winning year for the women's football and rugby teams, the men's rugby team, golfers in the Ryder Cup and of course Rory completing his grand slam, and Lando today. Having said that, my sense is that Rory looks too short.
Hmm. The Betfair forum suggests SPotY and Formula 1 share a production company, which might be worth a few points to Norris as they should have some good footage. See, now you are talking me into it.
Oh, and the last four winners have been women.
I don’t get the Rory love. He doesn’t seem like a particularly pleasant character by his alleged personal behaviour and he chooses to rep the Republic in the Olympics so clearly doesn’t see the UK as his world, yet people get very excited about him.
I think Lando has done a great thing, especially stopping Verstappen, but I don’t feel the outpouring that I felt when Lewis won his first title. I was in Switzerland at the time and basically every expat we knew were round at our house watching the race where he took the title and everyone was ecstatic - maybe years of Lewis winning has sucked the sense of excitement out of it, maybe it’s the lack of free to air coverage but it doesn’t feel like such a thing.
I only really hope that whoever wins has really done something special and is a good egg.
On the Olympics thing, golf like rugby is an Island of Ireland set up, so that was his justification.
Is Lando a good shot for the SPOTY? I didn’t realise British F1 dominance until just now - Radio said that he was only the 11th Brit to win the F1 championship so I thought I would see which countries are more successful. Basically none are close. There are a raft who have three world champions but that is the next level. In totals Britain has 21 world championships with Germany next on 12.
Anyway, congratulations to Lando, I look forward to Jackie Stewart’s excuses for picking at you if you win another couple.
SPotY is a market I steer clear of since so much depends on the BBC's nomination list which in some years tends to the eccentric.
Looking at Betfair, Rory McIlroy is odds-on, Lando 7/2, Chloe Kelly 9/2, any price the rest. Lioness Chloe has traded shorter and her early backers will be nursing burnt fingers. Ellie was rugby's hope but now they can't give her away at over 100/1. 40/1 Luke Littler might have been in with a shout but has been nominated again for Young SPotY which he won last year. Cynical darts fans might call this sabotage but he was runner-up in 2024.
I'd be inclined to wait for the shortlist in a winning year for the women's football and rugby teams, the men's rugby team, golfers in the Ryder Cup and of course Rory completing his grand slam, and Lando today. Having said that, my sense is that Rory looks too short.
Hmm. The Betfair forum suggests SPotY and Formula 1 share a production company, which might be worth a few points to Norris as they should have some good footage. See, now you are talking me into it.
Oh, and the last four winners have been women.
I don’t get the Rory love. He doesn’t seem like a particularly pleasant character by his alleged personal behaviour and he chooses to rep the Republic in the Olympics so clearly doesn’t see the UK as his world, yet people get very excited about him.
I think Lando has done a great thing, especially stopping Verstappen, but I don’t feel the outpouring that I felt when Lewis won his first title. I was in Switzerland at the time and basically every expat we knew were round at our house watching the race where he took the title and everyone was ecstatic - maybe years of Lewis winning has sucked the sense of excitement out of it, maybe it’s the lack of free to air coverage but it doesn’t feel like such a thing.
I only really hope that whoever wins has really done something special and is a good egg.
On the Olympics thing, golf like rugby is an Island of Ireland set up, so that was his justification.
No. Northern Ireland competes as part of the GB team, he actively chose to rep Ireland. Absolutely fine with that choice, I just don’t understand why he is so feted in Britain for many reasons.
NEW: Nigel Farage has been reported to the Met Police by a former member of his campaign team over claims of falsified election expenses in Clacton last year.
Richard Everett alleges up to £9,000 of under or misreported expenses, including to do up a Reform-themed office bar.
Who's "they"? His own campaign team? If his own campaign team are out to get him, I think that's probably on Farage.
This seems to strengthen Farage to me.
It's quite obviously politically/revenge motivated, and frankly nobody gives a monkeys whether Nigel declared £9000 of election expenses. It won't bring him down, but it does make him look like the victim of a witchhunt. If anything, it weakens the case of the childhood racism and Russia stories - both of which had the potential to be disquieting, and lumps them all into the perception of a barrage of excrement being chucked at Nigel by a desperate political class.
Guessing that this accusation has been a sort of 'keep in your pocket' type thing, it's intriguing to think why it has been deployed now.
The simplest explanation is that it has been done because of the other attacks - to really clobber Farage when he's perceived as being on the ropes.
If it's Labour who has masterminded this, there could be a slightly more human explanation - Farage has accused Labour of 'electoral fraud' in delaying the mayoral elections. It could be that someone in Labour has seen that and thought 'I'll give you electoral fraud' - therefore the decision to go now has been made. That would be very satisfying for them, but wrathful acts never really work. It's a mistake to hate your enemy, and as I said, the quantity and tempo of attacks weakens their individual impact in this case.
NEW: Nigel Farage has been reported to the Met Police by a former member of his campaign team over claims of falsified election expenses in Clacton last year.
Richard Everett alleges up to £9,000 of under or misreported expenses, including to do up a Reform-themed office bar.
Who's "they"? His own campaign team? If his own campaign team are out to get him, I think that's probably on Farage.
This seems to strengthen Farage to me.
It's quite obviously politically/revenge motivated, and frankly nobody gives a monkeys whether Nigel declared £9000 of election expenses. It won't bring him down, but it does make him look like the victim of a witchhunt. If anything, it weakens the case of the childhood racism and Russia stories - both of which had the potential to be disquieting, and lumps them all into the perception of a barrage of excrement being chucked at Nigel by a desperate political class.
Guessing that this accusation has been a sort of 'keep in your pocket' type thing, it's intriguing to think why it has been deployed now.
The simplest explanation is that it has been done because of the other attacks - to really clobber Farage when he's perceived as being on the ropes.
If it's Labour who has masterminded this, there could be a slightly more human explanation - Farage has accused Labour of 'electoral fraud' in delaying the mayoral elections. It could be that someone in Labour has seen that and thought 'I'll give you electoral fraud' - therefore the decision to go now has been made. That would be very satisfying for them, but wrathful acts never really work. It's a mistake to hate your enemy, and as I said, the quantity and tempo of attacks weakens their individual impact in this case.
This sort of attack didn’t work against Trump so isn’t a silver bullet, it can be turned back and end up benefitting the target. You would think his enemies might have noticed what happened in the US.
NEW: Nigel Farage has been reported to the Met Police by a former member of his campaign team over claims of falsified election expenses in Clacton last year.
Richard Everett alleges up to £9,000 of under or misreported expenses, including to do up a Reform-themed office bar.
Who's "they"? His own campaign team? If his own campaign team are out to get him, I think that's probably on Farage.
This seems to strengthen Farage to me.
It's quite obviously politically/revenge motivated, and frankly nobody gives a monkeys whether Nigel declared £9000 of election expenses. It won't bring him down, but it does make him look like the victim of a witchhunt. If anything, it weakens the case of the childhood racism and Russia stories - both of which had the potential to be disquieting, and lumps them all into the perception of a barrage of excrement being chucked at Nigel by a desperate political class.
While I agree completely with the point you are making if he has under-reported by £9k that is a big issue. The limit is just over £11k plus 8p per elector which on average comes to around £20k. A £9k unreported spend (and presumably an overspend) is serious and would result in a prosecution of the agent and candidate. How on earth it can involve a 'Reform-themed office bar' I haven't a clue and might well be mischief making, but shouldn't be taken lightly.
Just for reference I have been a prosecution witness in an election fraud case involving understating election expenses in a local election. In the end the CPS dropped the case through lack of evidence, but it shows they don't like you messing around in this area.
I knew he was ill, but very sad. He was a brilliant photographer. My favourite of his books is "Small World" about the impact of tourism. It encoraged me to include other tourists in photos rather than being exasperated at them.
This is exactly what it says it is. Postcards of civic centres, holiday camps, new towns, even car parks and motorway service centres. The modest aspiration and belief in the future gives them a tragic pathos.
I love Boring Postcards. Never has a book been less accurately titled. It's actually a powerful and moving testament to postwar optimism, the idea that ordinary lives were worth celebrating, and improving. A great photographer too. RIP indeed.
Comments
If I'd wanted to cook the books, I would have chosen 2011 as a starting date, but I did not.
You can choose any other appropriate date and its the same, because reality is the same. From before Brexit (implementation/referendum) to date the UK has grown by more.
Indeed looking back the past 15 years, the UK has grown by the most from 10/15 starting points, Germany from 1/15 and the Euro Area from 4/15.
2015/16 is distorted by German data collapsing and the UK supposedly being richer than Germany per capita, data not seen before or since, which is patently false.
The polling shows by a substantial majority that the public thinks it the wrong decision.
And looks like it will back Farage's impeccable judgement at the Locals, Welsh and Scottish elections a few weeks before.
It would be funny if it wasn't so tragic.
https://www.newstatesman.com/comment/2022/11/brexit-damage-uk-economy-mark-carney
A trained economist, from your own side, explaining why you are wrong. I can do no more.
One thing that puzzles me, though, about all these figures is they all (UK, Germany, Eurozone) indicate reasonable GDP per capita growth over the past 10--15 years, whichever date range you use.
Why then is the general mood so low and the population so pissed off?
When you're spending all your wages on rent and have too much month at the end of your money, you're not going to be happy.
Real tax rates on working people are too high and benefits of growth are accruing to asset holders and people who don't work for their incomes.
You don't need a car to go online and renew your insurance.
Best chowder is at Moran's Oyster Cottage, Kilcolgan, Galway.
Excellent Guinness too.
Of course, if two countries are both in the Euro, this becomes easy. So your france-germany comparison actually makes sense. But a Uk-france or Uk-germany doesn't. Stick to GDP increases per year in toto or per capita, or PPP, or whatever. But in their own currency.
Carney made further errors on top, you didn't.
1) it would have concentrated the Leavers' minds as to exactly what form of Brexit they wanted; and
2) it would have completely disavowed the Remainers' hopes of stopping the whole process.
The issue is much more that inequality has grown so large numbers haven;t benefitted.
Is Lando a good shot for the SPOTY? I didn’t realise British F1 dominance until just now - Radio said that he was only the 11th Brit to win the F1 championship so I thought I would see which countries are more successful. Basically none are close. There are a raft who have three world champions but that is the next level. In totals Britain has 21 world championships with Germany next on 12.
Anyway, congratulations to Lando, I look forward to Jackie Stewart’s excuses for picking at you if you win another couple.
Middle incomes have been squeezed considerably closer to minimum wage though.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2025-04-02/uk-minimum-wage-may-have-passed-a-tipping-point
Yes we can stop talking about Brexit 2016, but often it is shorthand for the politics and economics of living in 2025 with an economic and political leviathan next door and a voting public as divided and removed from where the political parties are as they were in 2016.
Call it UKEU2025 or something.
https://x.com/afneil/status/1997742771839676763
Hope we can do better in the Third Test, but not holding my breath.
It is - or possibly an example of convergent evolution between skink and chaudière, as I found with a French colleague visiting Scotland. A potato, onion/leek, milk and fish combination.
(please?)
Neil claims that the announcement of the Treasury-funded bond selloff did not spook the markets and lead to increased bond sales - but this happened only 24 hours before the minibudget. And even if we dismiss the announcement from having any intrinsic market effects, its fiscal impact was to expose the Treasury to £80-£100bn of additional cost, and therefore borrowing, with zero economic benefit. That dwarves the so-called 'unfunded tax cuts' in the minibudget, so if the markets were untroubled by it, they can't have been paying attention.
NEW: Nigel Farage has been reported to the Met Police by a former member of his campaign team over claims of falsified election expenses in Clacton last year.
Richard Everett alleges up to £9,000 of under or misreported expenses, including to do up a Reform-themed office bar.
https://x.com/tony_diver/status/1997750935364260141?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q
Cameron tried to get back a slither of the flexibility given up when Brown signed Lisbon and was treated with scorn by the fanatics. Its probably just as well but it has wasted an incredible amount of energy that might have been used more productively.
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2025/dec/07/martin-parr-obituary
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@patrickkmaguire
Labour Together, the influential think tank that ran Sir Keir Starmer’s leadership campaign is canvassing party members on candidates to replace him
In the clearest sign yet that the Labour Party is preparing for a change of prime minister the campaign group once run by Morgan McSweeney, Starmer’s chief of staff, this weekend asked activists for their views on contenders
A survey sent to local Labour parties, seen by The Times, prompted members to name the politicians who stood “the best chance of leading Labour to electoral victory at the next general election” compared with Starmer and to rank those they would be likely to vote for in a leadership election
Eight senior Labour politicians were named alongside Starmer. The five cabinet ministers in the survey are Wes Streeting, the health secretary; Shabana Mahmood, the home secretary; Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary; Ed Miliband, the energy secretary; and Darren Jones, the chief secretary to the prime minister
Labour Together also listed Angela Rayner, the former deputy prime minister; Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester; and Lucy Powell, who was elected deputy leader of the Labour Party in October
Respondents to the online questionnaire, who were offered entry into a £500 cash draw for their responses, were invited to place each politician on a “left-right scale” of “very left wing” to “very right wing”
The survey ended with a series of hypothetical head-to-head leadership choices
https://t.co/iqAtd0RG8h
The most malign consequence of "fuck the experts" was that in the event subsequent analysis found that Brexit had damaged the economy, the same mantra could be repeated. A self-reinforcing loop.
It's quite obviously politically/revenge motivated, and frankly nobody gives a monkeys whether Nigel declared £9000 of election expenses. It won't bring him down, but it does make him look like the victim of a witchhunt. If anything, it weakens the case of the childhood racism and Russia stories - both of which had the potential to be disquieting, and lumps them all into the perception of a barrage of excrement being chucked at Nigel by a desperate political class.
SHOCKED!
@phildstewart
(Reuters) - The Kremlin on Sunday welcomed U.S. President Donald Trump's new national security strategy and said it largely accorded with Russia's own perceptions, the first time that Moscow has so fulsomely praised such a document from its former Cold War foe.
The U.S. National Security Strategy described Trump's vision as one of "flexible realism" and argued that the U.S. should revive the 19th century Monroe Doctrine, which declared the Western Hemisphere to be Washington's zone of influence.
The strategy, signed by Trump, also warned that Europe faces "civilizational erasure", that it was a "core" U.S. interest to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine, and that Washington wanted to reestablish strategic stability with Russia.
"The adjustments that we see correspond in many ways to our vision," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told state television reporter Pavel Zarubin when asked about the new U.S. strategy.
https://x.com/phildstewart/status/1997721122478145989
The old gent perched one footed on a stepladder, cleaning windows in Hebden is fantastic.
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2025/dec/07/martin-parr-photographer-career-in-pictures
The last time a driver from a team not based in the UK won the driver's championship was 2007.
Small World https://share.google/0Kmfvl253yfbaNLP3
But I have a high regard for his brilliant collection "Boring Postcards"
Boring Postcards https://share.google/hxamSrEBp9JXc0haV
This is exactly what it says it is. Postcards of civic centres, holiday camps, new towns, even car parks and motorway service centres. The modest aspiration and belief in the future gives them a tragic pathos.
Looking at Betfair, Rory McIlroy is odds-on, Lando 7/2, Chloe Kelly 9/2, any price the rest. Lioness Chloe has traded shorter and her early backers will be nursing burnt fingers. Ellie was rugby's hope but now they can't give her away at over 100/1. 40/1 Luke Littler might have been in with a shout but has been nominated again for Young SPotY which he won last year. Cynical darts fans might call this sabotage but he was runner-up in 2024.
I'd be inclined to wait for the shortlist in a winning year for the women's football and rugby teams, the men's rugby team, golfers in the Ryder Cup and of course Rory completing his grand slam, and Lando today. Having said that, my sense is that Rory looks too short.
Hmm. The Betfair forum suggests SPotY and Formula 1 share a production company, which might be worth a few points to Norris as they should have some good footage. See, now you are talking me into it.
Oh, and the last four winners have been women.
https://youtu.be/MI-0W3_ndCg?si=CJHkkBZzK53Q4j9C
Surely not.
So you're right, serving American food would be a serious error.
I think Lando has done a great thing, especially stopping Verstappen, but I don’t feel the outpouring that I felt when Lewis won his first title. I was in Switzerland at the time and basically every expat we knew were round at our house watching the race where he took the title and everyone was ecstatic - maybe years of Lewis winning has sucked the sense of excitement out of it, maybe it’s the lack of free to air coverage but it doesn’t feel like such a thing.
I only really hope that whoever wins has really done something special and is a good egg.
(No Fiddler On The Roof fans in the house?)
It would be as if the Pope, having been dumped, was able to take the buildings and congregations with him.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00hy18h/margaret
The simplest explanation is that it has been done because of the other attacks - to really clobber Farage when he's perceived as being on the ropes.
If it's Labour who has masterminded this, there could be a slightly more human explanation - Farage has accused Labour of 'electoral fraud' in delaying the mayoral elections. It could be that someone in Labour has seen that and thought 'I'll give you electoral fraud' - therefore the decision to go now has been made. That would be very satisfying for them, but wrathful acts never really work. It's a mistake to hate your enemy, and as I said, the quantity and tempo of attacks weakens their individual impact in this case.
Just for reference I have been a prosecution witness in an election fraud case involving understating election expenses in a local election. In the end the CPS dropped the case through lack of evidence, but it shows they don't like you messing around in this area.