Briefings for Britain, December 5, Catherine McBride
Bloomberg recently published an article by Philip Aldrick and Andrew Atkinson entitled The Economic reality of life Outside the EU: Brexit in Charts. It is yet another attempt by diehard Remainers to try to prove that Brexit has been an economic disaster for the UK, this time with the use of some very selective data.
There is a lot wrong with this article, as well as the use of some emotive language; for example a range of UK GDP estimates are described as GDP ‘damage’. The article also uses unsubstantiated platitudes such as: ‘most economists accept that the economy will suffer in the long term.’ They throw this line in after admitting that: ‘since Brexit, the UK [National Income] has effectively held its own.’ It is inconceivable to the authors that Brexit may not have made the UK economy ‘suffer’.
There are also several non-sequiturs. For example, under the subtitle Household Income, they complain that UK real disposable income has trailed that of Germany, France and Italy, but then in the next section they complain that an acute labour shortage in the UK is forcing wages to rise. Surely if they are worried about low disposable incomes, they should be happy about higher wages? But while they are honest enough to state that the loss of workers is due to the pandemic, retirement and long-term illness, and not Brexit, they don’t mention that the UK’s low real disposable income is due to high inflation caused by a massive covid-related increase in the money supply, coupled with 18 years of ridiculous energy policies that undermined both domestic supplies and ignored the possibility of the present energy security problems. Both issues have nothing to do with Brexit.
Click here to read the piece in full.