The Treasury published an extensive dossier on the consequences of Brexit yesterday, no doubt at considerable public cost.
In the interests of balance I thought I'd publish my own dossier that is based on something a little more substantial than the Treasury's offering. So I went to Wikipedia and found this:
Whoever you ask the UK is the fifth largest economy in the world. The sources are reliable: don't question the use of Wikipedia on this occasion.
I make the point that whatever data you look at the UK is the fifth biggest economy in the world. And that is after 43 years of EU membership.
How we use that wealth; to whom we distribute it; what investment we make for the future: all those things are open to question. But if we deal in facts the EU has done us rather well, it would seem.
And so I doubled my research budget and checked GDP per head:
So now we drop as low as 21st, but let's be honest, that's after taking some oil states, San Marino and a massive pile of tax havens where the GDP data is as dubious as can be - and is certainly not available to the local population - into account.
In that case let's just talk the only facts we know. And that is, warts and all, the UK seems to have done rather well as a member of the EU. Which is about all that can sensibly be said economically on the issue.
Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:
You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.
And if you would like to support this blog you can, here:
Buy me a coffee!
We were all doing well until an American-created financial crisis caused a whole lot of trouble. The EU is not the problem. An out of control America is. Sorry to bang on about it but I think I am right.
The EU – the EBC – was not designed to deal with a financial shock of that magnitude.
We are being made to look in the wrong direction by the vote.
It would also be interesting to add up how many EU grants this country has benefitted from over the years.
I can think of two I know of – a grant given to a community group in Rochdale to investigate poverty in their area which revealed even worse levels than that the local Council admitted to and if I recall the new speeded up railway link between Sheffield and Doncaster was also EU funded. This funding was definitely beneficial and the work done may never have been carried out if we were relying on our own ‘sovereignty’.
“The EU is not the problem. An out of control America is.”
PSR – lets not forget they are the spoor of the same creature, financial capitalism. The dominant financial and political institutions of the EU and the US are the problem. The vast majority of people on both continents just have to suffer by them, until such time as they decide not to anymore. There are know the signs that the population of both continents are starting to stand up and demand change.
There was no financial capitalism in North America until the European colonists (and their financial masters back home) allowed and encouraged it to develop as the dominant mode of production and finance, often over and above many of the colonists attempts to develop more social forms of ownership. The history of the US is as much the history of the struggle between capitalism and socialism as has happened here in the UK and Europe.
In that we have an awful lot of commonality with the vast majority of the people across both continents. I think it is actually more likely that the US population can force change sooner than we can here in the UK and Europe, because the principles of democracy have been upheld for such a long time in their constitution and the realisation is now evident for many that it has been grossly abused by financial and corporate power.
We need to develop more of the cross Atlantic links which allow us to understand and benefit from the growing movements that can help achieve this.
I don’t believe the EU can be judged as an entity in and of itself. It is a player in the globalised world of capital flows and, as such, is another mechanism for shuffling these flows around. We know that from the behaviour of the ECB and its bail out mentality. Greek debt as a percentage of EEC as a whole is about 2%-yet look what happened.
Goldman Sachs (the vampire squid) advises an IN vote! The EU is a conduit for these forces and not for public purpose. In fact most of our growth post WW2 occurred while we were NOT in the EEC-by 1973 the monetarists were on the ascendancy and by 1975 the housing sector started its bubble pattern as did the secular stagnation of wages-how did the EU stop this-it didn’t. GDP metrics don’t reveal this.
Because Goldman Sachs advise something does not necessarily make it wrong
No- but it’s a good ground for being damned suspicious!
It certainly confirms that the IN vote is supported by a large proportion of global financial interests, unless of course Goldman Sachs is up to its old trick of recommending one thing to its clients while short selling the market in good knowledge that what they are punting is indeed “crap” and just waiting to fail.
You cannot trust a hungry and venomous snake not to bite you just because he said he wouldn’t!
Yes I have looked at these tables for some years. Britain and France used to change positions between 5th and 6th regularly (was 4th and 5th until China overtook both some years ago). This used to be largely down to exchange rate between the pound and Euro. More recently the UK population has overtaken that of France; indeed it is predicted to overtake Germany mid century and will now probably stay ahead of France unless the pound drops dramatically.
Ireland comes artificially high because there is a considerable disparity between GNP and GDP.
I really have no idea what Brexit would look like; as an Irish Republican I should welcome it as it will probably hasten a United Ireland. (I have lived in the UK since 1981 when my postdoc position in the US disappeared after Carter lost the election and I was offered a job in Sheffield). Scotland would leave more likely than not. In the short term it will be a disaster for the left. Corbyn needs to rally his supporters and get the young turning out in numbers. Time to get my 11 year old an Irish Passport – apparently the number of passport applications from first generation Irish people in the UK has increased sharply since the turn of the year.
My children also have Irish passports
As have I
The conversation I had with my wife last night was along the lines that in the event of BREXIT then SINDY the first thing I would do would be to get a Scottish passport, by virtue of having been born there.
I think it is 11th in the manufacturing league though. And dropping.
Fair point
I can’t see how Brexit will help that
Tax havens don’t make anything and that is what we will be
The UK does seem to have done well out of the EU. Does this cause you to stop and think about that neoliberal freedom of movement of capital principle? Also how does the performance of Norway and Switzerland affect your thinking?
Neoliberalism is dying
The reference made is to the past not the future
Your logic either applies or it.doesn’t. You can’t this is important information relating to the UK but tells us nothing about Norway and Switzerland.
Also, it is normal in academic circles to explain WHY he’s tables are useful information sources; not jus tot state that they are so.
My logic applies because there has been economic hegemony within which the UK has fared well in the EU
For many practical purposes both Norway and Switzerland have been in the EU
Comparing with them shows we get no gain of the form Brexit claims by leaving
And this is not an academic blog: I credit my readers with the intelligence to work things out when they are pretty obvious
Maybe you just patronise whenever you can
“For many practical purposes both Norway and Switzerland have been in the EU
Comparing with them shows we get no gain of the form Brexit claims by leaving”
Can In people stop comparing the UK to Switzerland and Norway? Given the UK is the *fifth biggest economy on the planet*.
For example if the UK wants control of its borders, it will have control of its borders. Like the USA, like Canada, like Australia, like Brazil, like Japan, like Russia, like any other advanced nation on the planet. That is a ‘red line.’
Similarly the Treasury forecast is a load of BS and blame shifting from the Tories.
Since a state freed from the EU treaty can hire and purchase anything for sale in Sterling, really this shows what a complete lack of imagination the Tories have for the future of the UK and the use of UK resources.
Complete fabrication from beginning to end from a bunch of civil servants that were asleep at the wheel when the crash came in 2008.
government investment => taxation + increase in private savings
Each time, every time for any positive set of tax rates.
How much the economy grows or shrinks is nearly all down to the level of government spending undertaken by the government to support the businesses of the UK. Similarly any increase in ‘borrowing costs’ warned about the BoE and Osborne can be stopped by the BoE and Osborne, even in the short term.
It really is time that sovereign nations started to flex their muscles over the ratings agencies etc to show who is actually in charge.
If you instituted a good old fashioned crime of high treason for calling into question the ability of the sovereign state to repay the national debt denominated in its own currency, then the nonsense would stop instantly (>_<)
Plus the only way you can 'lose' the taxation is if you spend £36bn less on public services.
And that is actually Osborne's intention.
The Tories want to slash that, and strip the public services.
If we leave the EU we just need to elect a government capable of using the new freedoms from the finance restrictions (Article 123) in the EU treaty and off we go.
Your argument makes some sense
But does whether in or out of the EU
So I am not sure what it adds
I agree with your earlier post that the £4,300 is irrelevant. For Britain I think argument is mainly political, in particular because we are not in the Eurozone.
I understand the worries of those on the left but I think those worries persist in or out, and on a more positive note I believe that there are good people in positions of power in the EU that are fighting for the kind of world that many of us would like to see. This profile of the Danish EU commissioner is one example.
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/jan/28/margrethe-vestager-eu-competition-commissioner-google-tax-deal-uk-government
In shaping the future of Europe, I think it is better to talk than not talk, better to collaborate than isolate.
Just think how much wealthier (in national GDP terms) we all would be without tax havens and tax competition!
So then the question is who is more serious about closing the tax havens and stopping tax competition as an economic activity, the EU, the UK, both or neither?
Probably neither (to any great degree other than lip service) as they know that they would leave themselves at a competitive disadvantage against the other regions of the world.
A long time ago I worked in the IT side of the global airline industry and it struck me the other day that we worked out 50-60 years ago that it was not in any country’s interests to have no global rules or standards for obvious reasons (terrorism, systems failure, passenger safety, industry reputation, etc..). Any airline or nation state that did not agree to the global rules and standard was not allowed to participate in the global airline system and was excluded from offering any international flights as a rogue carrier/nation.
It would be the simplest thing in the world to implement the same thing within the global financial/tax system, just a bit of code and the flick of a switch and the rogue businesses/nations would be shut out of international trade immediately.
Worth thinking about as we face an even greater threat of terrorism, global financial instability and citizen safety from tax havens and tax competition. Where are the global standards and systems to prevent such risks?
I would be more interested in which manufacturing/business would relocate in the case of English exit.
I know of one international law llp making plans to withdraw, and a few EU based utils considering off-loading operations, although things don’t seem to be shifting into high gear. Even if the vote is to leave, negotiations will take a while..with a two-year limit..up to two years a majority vote can settle terms, after that things are a lot more restrictive.
Certainly, many leavers seem to be of the opinion that “they need us more than we need them”.
Which is a weird viewpoint given that we either run with the EFTA/EEA option, in which case it is “business as usual”, along with four freedoms, or WTO tariffs, in which case it is a mess.
Still, logic is not a bigots good point, and there are a lot of them on both sides.
Either way, the rhetoric on both sides will have lasting repercussions in the EU whatever we do.
Looks like we’ll be jumping out of a pot of pee and into a pot of poo. A good old English compromise.
There is gap between what EU really represents for the citizens of UK, and for the citizens of other EU members, and what it should represent. The main motiv and goal of those who rule EU is definitely not quality of life of its citizen. Who governs EU and with what motives? From the times of Founding fathers, Schumann and others, EU was a mix of a noble, attractive idea and pragmatic cartel thinking. Varoufakis has correctly described the functioning of EU – on the top there is no democratically elected body, there is Euro Group, controlled by the Global Finance. UK staying IN could probably help EU and help itself by continuing already started steps in the area of Tax, sailing towards Corageous State and Reclaiming Development.