He says that there is now evidence that the Leavers hate to confront:<\/p>\n
\nThey have got it, in spades. The so-called impact assessments for no deal are, quite simply, horrifying. They were underlined recently by the Bank of England governor, Mark Carney, who rightly drew attention to the messages coming through loud and clear from business, trade unions, the City and, not least, food suppliers, road hauliers, ports and airports.<\/p>\n
Now, of course, when they have got what they asked for – namely, attention to the possibility of a cliff-edge Brexit – the Brexiters don’t like it and yell “project fear”.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Hmm, did I miss something. Damaging new evidence that is “quite simply, horrifying”.<\/p>\n
In my blog post – Brexit doom predictions – the Y2K of today<\/a> (August 28, 2018) – I mentioned that the UK Guardian thinks it is useful to have William Keegan continue his relentless articles about the dire costs of Brexit.<\/p>\n
He rarely offers anything of substance. Just obsessive dislike for the idea that Britain will be sovereign again.<\/p>\n
And over the weekend, the UK Guardian continued to pump out its anti-Brexit propaganda.<\/p>\n
The UK Guardian article e – Brexit costing Britain \u00a3500m a week and rising, says report<\/a> (September 29, 2018) – was in the current journalistic tradition of being recyclers of press releases put out by organisations seeking to advance their own agendas.<\/p>\n
It provides uncritical coverage of the latest report from the Centre for European Reform (released September 30, 2018) – The Cost of Brexit to June 2018<\/a>.<\/p>\n
I covered their last ‘update’ from the Centre for European Reform in this blog post – How to distort the Brexit debate – exclude significant factors!<\/a> (June 25, 2018).<\/p>\n
The conclusion was straightforward.<\/p>\n
1. The reliability of their estimates are doubtful.<\/p>\n
2. A significant difference between the reference group nations they used to compare the UK GDP growth rates to was excluded from the analysis by the Centre for European Reform.<\/p>\n
3. If we consider the different fiscal trajectories between the reference group and the UK, it is clear that post Brexit Referendum, Britain has diverged significantly from the reference group nations, all of which either maintained their fiscal support or increased it, while Britain has moved towards increased austerity marked by the current fiscal surplus.<\/p>\n
In other words, Garbage In-Garbage Out.<\/p>\n
The latest update claims that the “UK economy is 2.5 per cent smaller than it would be if the UK had voted to remain in the European Union”.<\/p>\n
While the CER claimed they revised their second model (which presents the latest results) to meet criticisms received from economists, they certainly did not address the concerns I raised – that of omitted variables bias.<\/p>\n
So nothing new except now they are adding some politicisation to their rubbish by claiming that:<\/p>\n
\nThe knock-on hit to the public finances is now \u00a326 billion per annum – or \u00a3500 million a week … It is possible to work out how much extra borrowing the UK’s foregone output implies … Our estimate shows there is no Brexit dividend …\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
This is a political statement. Their metholology cannot differentiate in any robust way the causality.<\/p>\n
The fact is that they cannot reasonably make the claim that “the culprit” explaining the slowdown in Britain’s real GDP growth “is the vote for Brexit”.<\/p>\n
It is more plausible, given other indicators, that the fiscal contraction has driven the slowdown. Their methodology does not even include that possibility, which is the issue I raised in my analysis of their first report.<\/p>\n
The UK Guardian’s ‘news’ presentation of the story is deliberately polemical.<\/p>\n
They have a picture of a big red bus that the Leave campain used with the caption “We send the EU \u00a350 million a day let’s fund our NHS instead. Vote Leave. Let’s take back control”.<\/p>\n
And then open with the claim (merely repeating the press release from the CER) that the research results (from CER) are in “stark contrast to the \u00a3350m “dividend” promised by the Leave campaign.”<\/p>\n
The really dishonest claim is that:<\/p>\n
\n… the government’s austerity drive would be on the way to completion had Britain voted to stay in the European Union … The model also suggests that had Britain not voted to leave, the deficit would be down to just 0.1% of GDP, or \u00a32bn. It would mean the austerity drive in place since 2010 would be all but complete.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Think about this for a moment.<\/p>\n
Their ‘model’ does not consider the degrees of fiscal shift in any of the nations considered. They just take the different growth paths (as if they were independent of the fiscal shifts over time) and make a facile calculation that any primary school child could probably accomplish that if the fiscal balance was x times sensitive to growth and growth fell by y, then the fiscal balance would be different by x times y.<\/p>\n
So if growth was z per cent higher than it is, then the fiscal balance would vary by that factor and so be in larger surplus than it is.<\/p>\n
Of course, if the fiscal austerity had not been moderated (to some extent) by George Osborne in 2012 as national growth was crashing under the strain of the fiscal cuts, then the growth rate would have been that much lower than it was over period 2012-2018.<\/p>\n
And the difference between the comparison nations in the CER report and the UK would have been that much larger.<\/p>\n
In other words, they are trying to capture both sides of the debate:<\/p>\n
1. The Labourites who will be concerned about growth and employment.<\/p>\n
2. The Tories who will be miffed that their cherished austerity is not moving fast enough.<\/p>\n
The UK Guardian article goes on to details rumours of British industry leaders having secret meetings with Europeans to plan relocations etc.<\/p>\n
The UK Guardian has form in this respect though.<\/p>\n
I saw a Reuter’s report last week (September 26, 2018) – Exclusive: With six months to go before Brexit, 630 finance jobs have left – Reuters survey<\/a> – which reminded me of the long stream of claims since 20156 that the UK financial sector was about to leave London (and other British cities), bound for Paris, Frankfurt, Amsterdam and anywhere else those making the claims could land a dart on a map of continental Europe.<\/p>\n
Remember all that?<\/p>\n
In 2016, TheCityUK commissioned a private ‘global management’ consulting company to analyse what a vote for Brexit would do for the financial services sector in the UK.<\/p>\n
It released the report – The Impact of the UKs Exit from the EU on the UK-based Financial Services Sector<\/a>.<\/p>\n
The Report claimed that:<\/p>\n
\nWe have assessed the impact at a granular business line and product level to allow us to impact of outcomes on each business area. We looked at the value chain for each activity, which allows us to separate activitis along this chain that are impacted by regulatory change from those that are not.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
So that sounded as though it was a seriously researched study.<\/p>\n
It then poses a serious of constraints that would emerge if there was a “low access scenario”. None of them are very credible.<\/p>\n
But the final result is that the ‘study’ estimates that up to 75,000 jobs will be lost.<\/p>\n
To put that forecast into perspective, the UK financial sector currently employs about 1.1 million people.<\/p>\n
Based on the accuracy of the forecasts I wonder why the company hasn’t closed its door for lack of business.<\/p>\n
In April 2016, PwC released a report – Leaving the EU: Implications for the UK financial services sector<\/a> – which concluded that in relation to the Financial Sector there would be:<\/p>\n
\n… a reduction of 70,000-100,000 in … number of people employed … in 2020.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
They also claimed there “could be potential knock-on impacts” on the financial sector, but do not put any employment numbers against that assertion – rather they claim it would correspond to “a further reduction in FS GVA of around 2 per cent by 2020” and get worse over time.<\/p>\n
Given the inital impact was estimated to be around “3.1%-5.5%” of Gross Value Added (GVA) which corresponds to “70,000-100,000” then 2 per cent might be around 45,000 extra jobs lost.<\/p>\n
Whatever, PwC was postulating massive job losses.<\/p>\n
Soon after Ernst Young decided to make itself relevant to this debate by offering their own forecasts (June 23, 2016) – UK\/EU: Working through uncertainty Practical considerations for Financial Institutions<\/a>.<\/p>\n
It claimed that:<\/p>\n
\nA UK exit from the EU may have a greater impact on the financial services sector than for any other area of the economy.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
It was then reported that they considered around 83,000 jobs would be lost.<\/p>\n
They went one step further with their so-called – Financial Services Brexit Tracker<\/a> – which apparently was offering some sort of ‘real time’ tracking of the job losses.<\/p>\n
Its December 11, 2017 update:<\/p>\n
\nAccording to the latest EY Financial Services Brexit Tracker, a total of 10,500 UK financial services jobs, including many front office roles, could be relocated to the continent in time for Day One of Brexit.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Their 2016 estimate was 12,500 jobs.<\/p>\n
On January 10, 2017, the Independent published an article – Brexit: London financial hub could lose more than 200,000 jobs amid uncertainty, LSE boss warns<\/a> – reported that the London Stock Exchange:<\/p>\n
\n… has warned the UK’s vote to leave the EU poses a risk to the global financial system and could cost the City of London up to 230,000 jobs …\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
We were told that:<\/p>\n
\nI’m not just talking about the clearing jobs themselves which number into the few thousands.But the very large array of ancillary functions, whether it’s syndication, trading, treasury management, middle office, back office, risk management, software, which range into far more than just a few thousand or tens of thousands. They would then start migrating.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
On October 31, 2017, BBC news reported that – Bank of England believes Brexit could cost 75,000 finance jobs<\/a> – which were told by “senior figures at the Bank are using the number as a ‘reasonable scenario’<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/billmitchell.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/UK_Financial_Sector_Job_Loss_Estimates.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\n