What positives?

There never were any. There was only one trade model that predicted any benefit, that developed by Patrick Minford. His model of trade essentially ignores transport costs (the gravity effect, i.e. you trade most with your neighbours). So he vastly overstates the benefit of trade deals with far away places. Even then his model only shows benefit because he assumed we would totally open our borders to free trade, and the costs of goods and services would plummet. Point one, in case anyone hadn’t noticed, we didn’t do this, and everything has got more expensive (c.f. Brexit’s direct contribution to inflation, including in particular food inflation). Point two, his model under this scenario basically predicted the complete annihilation of our manufacturing and farming base - so even under his terms, we’d all be unemployed but able to buy really cheap crap with our benefits payments. It’s a terrible model that is completely unrealistic and predicts outcomes that nobody other than a zealot would want anyway.

And the political gain of “no longer being told what to do by Europe” was an illusion. The reality is we were a key nation in Europe, and had made ourselves such a pain in the arse that most of the time we got exactly what we wanted, or very very close to it. Which actually meant our small nation got to yank the chain of 400 million people, giving us outlandish levels of influence and soft power on a global stage versus our size. By leaving we gave all that away - we literally gave away something that took decades to achieve - and are now an irrelevance.

Oh, and the “control our own borders”? Yeah. Another f**king myth, like the 100m Turks waiting to “invade”.

All of this was known before hand and was spelt out pretty clearly in lots of places. But people decided to believe Saint Nigel the True, and Lord Boris of Bulls**t. And now here we are. With lost gdp, higher inflation lost trade opportunities, few strategic cards to play, and more of an absence than a presence on the global stage.

And yet people come on here, and tell me Nigel has all the answers, and it’s all Starmer’s fault. Fucking unbelievable Geoff.

Posted By: Under soil heating, Jun 22, 10:32:30