Brexit Effect: Summary and conclusions – politicalbetting.com
Brexit Effect: Summary and conclusions – politicalbetting.com
This is the final article in a series analysing the oft-cited NBER paper, which estimates that Brexit reduced the UK’s GDP by 6-8%, usually shortened to 8%. The first three threads (here, here and here) argued that, contrary to the study, there is no persuasive evidence of a significant impact, either positive or negative, on GDP, employment or labour productivity.
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Or are they going to start blowing up each others infrastructure and cheating like Man City ?
Surely it’s a good thing. The UAE is reportedly wanting to produce more oil.
At some point countries in that part of the world will want nuclear technology (and potentially weapons too).
We know Israel only wants one nuclear power in the region....
EU 'ready' to sanction Israel over Russian vessel carrying stolen Ukrainian grain
https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2026/04/28/eu-ready-to-sanction-israel-over-russian-vessel-carrying-stolen-ukrainian-grain
A few countries are already boycotting Eurovision because of Israel's participation.
Wasn't it Theresa May who said we were leaving the European Union, not
EuropeEurovision?Of course the EU also directly funded UK organisations, to the tune of £1.5 billion – £2.5 billion annually.
That ought to be included in Fishing's calculation, and isn't - so his number is about 20% out from reality.
As has the EU.
Does he defend Israel, as they can usually do no wrong, or not as it’s Russia ?
That was one of the things I had to edit out of the paper, in which I pointed out that around 4% of the EU's budget goes on public administration so such sums are relatively trivial. In addition there are residual UK contributions to pensions, which I didn't offset.
I also left out that on the remainder of the UK's contributions we can reoptimise them according to our national priorities, i.e. away from agricultural subsidies and regional aid, improving efficiency.
Even then, my article was much too long.
I don't agree that 4% of 0.5% is equivalent to 6-8% or anything like it.
As it said, it wasn't meant as a full academic paper - just some thoughts to indicate an order of magnitude.
I'm afraid my pledge to make this article significantly shorter than the last one was about as trustworthy as a Keir Starmer campaign promise and had about as long a life.
So when one starts pumping, this reduces the income of the others.
While they have some table manners, this is the bunch that considered MBS killing a hostile journalist and sending a bloke to chop up the body ok. Getting caught was a bit bad, though.
Imagine that one country drops the income of the others by 25%, say.
Can you imagine the hijinks that could ensue?
Kanly from Dune (which was about Oil and OPEC, in part)
Do we believe him or not?
https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/eu-budget/eu-borrower-investor-relations/nextgenerationeu_en
My enemies enemies friends enemies friend is my secret trading partner.
Quite often that means trade with yourself. But you have to be careful.
You can be your own worst enemy.
https://x.com/Osinttechnical/status/2049133334773575811
If the answer's yes, the answer's no.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habshan-Fujairah_oil_pipeline
Current UAE production is around 2m bpd, the suggestion is that they have capacity for 5m bpd, and an economy diversified enough to withstand lower prices, unlike most other OPEC countries.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habshan-Fujairah_oil_pipeline
They have about a week before they have to start shutting down wells, which can cause permanent damage to facilities. This is the calculation of the Americans, that will get Iran to start negotiating about their nuclear weapons programme.
And strangely enough I would trust @Richard_Tyndall's comments far more than Trump's
The Justice Department seems to be going out of its way to avoid saying that Cole Allen didn't fire any weapons at all inside the Washington Hilton — and that the officer hit was most likely hit by friendly fire.
https://bsky.app/profile/vermontgmg.bsky.social/post/3mkkszuowws2z
In the later case, restarts can be… different. All very dependent on the geology, technology and expertise involved.
An end to OPEC would mean an end to supply restrictions and a return to every man for himself, which would mean more supply.
However, it's worth noting that (a) OPEC is much less important than it was thanks to the new supply from the US; and (b) even if Iran were to leave OPEC, then the Saudis, Kuwaitis and the like would probably still act (either formally or informally) to restrict supply somewhat and increase prices.
The PBer @Fishing has published a series. Published versions to date include:
- https://www.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2026/04/14/the-economic-impact-of-leaving-the-eu/
- https://www.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2026/04/20/brexit-effect-employment/
- https://www.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2026/04/24/brexit-effect-productivity-and-investment/
- https://www.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2026/04/28/brexit-effect-summary-and-conclusions/
If I have missed one out please tell me.On Net contribution to EU budget I was wondering whether there are any studies on the multiplier effect of of our own UK based spending vs EU spending in the UK?
I was involved in large EU projects in the late 1990s and it all seemed very clunky and obsessed with processology.
And that most people -including @Fishing (and probably me too
There are successful countries inside the EU. And there are unsuccessful ones inside too. Being inside the EU has not obviously dragged down Poland or Estonia or the Netherlands or Germany's growth rate. Being inside it, has not done anything obviously good for Greece or Italy.
Most economic success (and failure) is due to either geopolitical luck, or decisions made at the national level. When we were a member of the EU, we were one of its economic success stories, outgrowing pretty much all the other big Western countries. Now we've left, we're doing fine - relatively speaking we're probably not outperforming Germany and France by the same margin we were before, but then again, we've not got a massive influx of Eastern Europeans boosting the number of workers in the country.
You will only be able to tell if -economically- it's made a big difference when you take a twenty year view, so you can start to sift out the impact of Covid, Ukraine, Iran, and the like.
And my guess is that it won't. We'll do -probably- slightly better than our neighbours, but that's mostly a question of demographics than anything more exciting.
Edit : you can flare gas. If you have setup the flaring capacity.
https://bsky.app/profile/noelreports.com/post/3mkkubknpek24
They’re one of the countries most constrained by OPEC in terms of their actual vs potential supply.
Not very nice.
https://x.com/knesix/status/2049125985644093671
Conclusion:
The UAE is gambling that the era of cooperative hoarding is over. They are betting that in a world of war and energy transitions, the winner isn't the one who waits for the group, but the one who moves the fastest to monetize their resources.
And they're all in in the highest-stakes game theory bet of recent times.
Some oozes. Some spurts. Some you can stub a cigarette out in. Others is mixed with methane and would kill you if you lit up in the vicinity.
We are now back in HORIZON (I'm on a bid that's just gone in), but I don't know on what deal.
I've made parts for the internals of gas flare stacks - inside the flare tube they have a hollow torus made out of a very expensive heat resistant stainless with a load of nozzles in it to release the gas - it looks very much like an enormous kitchen gas hob.
We had a contract pressing and machining the torus halves. Used to be a fairly regular job, but we've not had an order for ages, presumably because of the decline of North Sea production.
I think there is a big orange reason behind #1 - though - although it would be harder for the UK to move towards the US with Trump in power, from the other point of view, Trump is just the latest in a long line of presidents who haven't liked us much: I think you have to go back to Bush before you find a president who was pro-UK (obviously I'd take the antipathy of Biden or Obama over, well, whatever Trump is).
#2 is more interesting. Why has the ratchet come to a halt since Brexit? Has it taken Brexit to move the EU machine into a more pragmatic mode?
I've said this before, but if only EU integration had come to a halt before the Lisbon treaty, or even the Maastricht treaty.
Mother's Day.
Guido Fawkes?.......
Which leaves the sovereignty angle. That the point of Brexit was Brexit itself. It's a success by dint of having happened. For better or worse - with most metrics thus far indicating worse - we have taken back control. Forget all the rest, it is argued, this is the Brexit benefit. Pretty much the only one but nevertheless potentially big enough to justify almost a decade of division, paralysis and distraction.
So what I'd like to ask Leave voters, given the importance of this, is do they feel it? Do they feel more sovereign now we aren't in the EU? Is the supposed Brexit dividend of being more in control something real and tangible to them? But wait, we don't have to ask them because the polls tell us the answer. Many of them now think it was a mistake and most of those who don't remain so hacked off they want to hand power to Nigel Farage and his bunch of chancers, fantasists and unsavouries. All in all, it's not a good report card.
In terms of reoptimising medicines regulation according to our national priorities... well, what's optimal for drug manufacturers is to have one process (EU) rather than two (EU, UK). It's not just about the money spent on employing people in a regulatory agency. There's also the knock on of regulatory divergence. UK companies have to spend more on the regulatory process, as they need to go through the UK and EU processes (the EU is too big a market to ignore + NI is under the EU rules). EU companies may just not bother with the UK, so we miss out. In practice, we probably end up following the EU decisions closely (but with some extra paperwork). In other words, we're back to being rule takers, not rule makers.
Now, repeat that for food safety stuff, aviation regulation. Etc. etc. etc.
Some in this thread suggest that the overall effect of Brexit on the economy, and perhaps more generally, was fairly minor. Maybe that's correct, but had that been the prospectus offered, would people have voted for Brexit? No.
https://www.svb.com/business-growth/global-expansion/ai-industry-trends-in-europe/
I couldn't even find any good estimates of exports/GDP multipliers.
'Watch for oil prices to start falling. UAE is about to start pumping like crazy to stop Iran and Russia from benefitting from the situation.'
@POTUS: "Honoring the British King might seem an ironic beginning to our celebration of 250 years of American independence — but in fact, no tribute could be more appropriate. Long before Americans had a nation or Constitution, we first had a culture, a character, and a creed. Before we ever proclaimed our independence, Americans carried within us the rarest of gifts: moral courage, and it came from a small but mighty kingdom from across the sea."
The current breakdown of council seat defences by party is as follows, out of a total of 4,992 up for election:
🌹LAB: 2,196
🌳CON: 1,134
🔶LDM: 663
🌍GRN: 170
➡️RFM: 78
📍Localists: 49
ℹ️Ind/Oth: 406
⬜Vacant: 34
🆕Newly created: 162
I reckon Greens will be looking to end with at least 1000.
I believe SKS would bite your hand off to end up with 1000 and I reckon retain 600 max
LDs should increase to around 1000
Reform biggest gainers with circa 1500
Con 500 msx
Not long to wait for a night I will enjoy a lot.
Bonus points if the US blockade on Iranian ports holds for a bit longer.
AIUI they have the Abu Dhabi pipeline at 1.502 million bpd, but does that have spare capacity at present?
The spot price, for wanting a physical barrel of the stuff today or tomorrow, is currently about 30% higher.
One more challenge here on net versus gross contributions. Given the extra UK bureaucracy to handle regulation that was previously outsourced to the European Union, it is possible the net effect of leaving the EU is to actually increase public expenditure to obtain the same UK specific outputs.
So that leaves short term upside of .7m bpd, which will help but is only about 3-4% of the Hormuz shortfall.
I can see more capacity being built at pace !
(And as it's been nearly a century and there's still no consensus on fiscal multipliers, maybe we're all just better off using a random number generator - everybody involved in economic modelling for any length of time gets thoughts like that occasionally.,,)