4 ms·

BoE chief: Brexit impact on UK economy negative for foreseeable future

18 points by teleforce 1y ago

robin_reala 1y ago
They don’t care. None of the Brexit protagonists were doing it because they thought the country would be better off financially; it for them was a philosophical point about governance.
- alextingle 1y ago
  No it was just a lever to make the people they hate unhappy. There was a tiny group who cared about the philosophy of governance, but they were massively outnumbered by the wingnuts who thought we'd somehow be better off. But all that was completely drowned out by the avalanche of pure hate.
  - robin_reala 1y ago
    Fair point, maybe I’m giving them too much credit.
- ndsipa_pomu 1y ago
  I thought it was more a case of making a few people a lot of money and then being able to drastically reduce human/worker rights so that company bosses could extort more money from their employees
eucryphia 1y ago
Yes, the unelected bureaucrats in Brussels will continue their punishment until the English no longer want their own parliament.
- thebruce87m 1y ago
  > the English Any particular reason you left the other 3 countries out?
- youngtaff 1y ago
  Britain isn’t part of the single market or customs union anymore so it’s treated like every other “third” country As a Britain it was obvious this would happen when we left the EU and the paperwork / costs involved with trading with the EU would rise and damage our economy We had liars and charlatans saying “we held all the cards” and leaving wouldn’t affect things and a lot of gullible people believed them Thos same liars and charlatans are now complaining about how many civil servants the UK has while neglecting the fact that we had to hire 100,000 to cope with the effects of Brexit
- FranzFerdiNaN 1y ago
  And how do those unelected bureaucrats (nice framing, tells a lot about who you are) punish the UK?
  - general1465 1y ago
    It is also ironic framing, because main Brexit negotiator for UK has been unelected bureaucrat Lord David Frost.
- general1465 1y ago
  I think that you forgot /s Britain decided to leave EU, yet somehow Brits felt entitled to Single Market. It could have customs union like Turkey has, but that would require some compromises on Brexit, which cult of Brexit did not allow.
  - youngtaff 1y ago
    As a Britain… I don’t think we wanted to leave the single market and I’m unconvinced that people actually wanted to leave the EU — mainly because they didn’t know what it meant and even the Brexit promoters said a Yes vote wouldn’t mean leaving the EU What they wanted to do was give the Establishment / Tories a black eye but ended up enabling the people what who were pushing for a hard Brexit that worked against most people’s interests
    - ndsipa_pomu 1y ago
      One of the things that I detest about the Brexit referendum was that "Brexit" wasn't at all defined (apart from leaving the EU). There were lots of hot air about Brexit not at all meaning a "hard" exit from the single market, and yet here we are. My favourite analogy on the referendum is having people vote on whether to have "meat" or "vegetarian" dinner: Suppose 40% of people enjoy vegetarian food, 20% only eat pork, 20% only eat beef and 20% only eat chicken. Then, after "voting", the results come in as 60% for "meat" and 40% for veg. However, what meal can you prepare to satisfy the "meat" vote considering that you can only satisfy 20% of them? (By the way, I was thrown off by your use of "As a Britain" rather than "As a Brit")
      - youngtaff 1y ago
        I never refer to myself as a Brit… I’m British or a Britain or from the UK
ChocolateGod 1y ago
Even if the UK were to rejoin the single market to try address this, I don't even think it would help much, people won't invest in the UK given the polls look like the next party would just yank the UK back out again.
yawpitch 1y ago
Ok, but at least we set the shape of our own damned bananas!
mike_hearn 1y ago
Bailey claims two things: 1. Negative impact for foreseeable future. 2. That he has always been carefully neutral, and is suddenly being forced to give his opinion. If you look at the actual data, which everyone should, it doesn't support claims like these and never has. There is no visible impact of Brexit on the economic figures. UK GDP growth hasn't departed from the other big countries in western Europe, the lines move in sync as they always did: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gdp-worldbank-constant-usd?tab=line&country=FRA~DEU~GBR https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gdp-worldbank-constant-us... You can see COVID, and the 2008 crash, but you can't see Brexit. The same happens if you look more directly at the trade figures, which does show a negative impact for about a month or two just after the new trading rules were implemented, but then immediately goes back to where it was after people figured out the new system. In most graphs you can't even see this transition period unless you zoom in, that's how short it was, and so there's just no impact on economic growth. So it turns out that single market membership had no benefit to the British economy, which is mostly services based and the single market only really tries to standardize trade in goods. This was not predicted by anyone in the media/economics profession. Academics, British government, central bankers, journalists, IMF, EU ... all of them got this dead wrong. None of them have any credibility left on the matter, yet they never show contrition. Only a handful of Brexit campaigners did correctly predict it and they get given no credit. Paul Krugman made all the usual wrong predictions before the vote, but to his minor credit did admit immediately afterwards that economists were engaged in "motivated reasoning" (i.e. lying). This is a specific example of a more general problem with the British establishment: they are willing to abuse legacy respect for institutions in order to advance their personal agendas, especially on Europe. Bailey really loves this line about how he has never taken a position. He uses it all the time. That's a good example of the kind of lying civil servants have often engaged in, this pretending to be neutral whilst actually being very biased. In reality he has criticized Brexit in the past, always with the same line about how he never takes a stance whilst simultaneously doing so. Here he is doing it in May: https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/speech/2025/may/andrew-bailey-speech-followed-by-fireside-chat-with-francine-lacqua-bloomberg?utm_source=chatgpt.com https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/speech/2025/may/andrew-baile... And in November 2024, where he "takes no position" but simultaneously "urges ministers to rebuild relations with the EU". https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/nov/14/bank-of-england-governor-urges-ministers-to-rebuild-relations-with-eu https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/nov/14/bank-of-eng... He wants to be seen as neutral whilst making claims about economics that he must know aren't true. But he's a BoE lifer and like many civil servants struggles to handle cases when reality departs from academic modeling predictions. Model says leaving EU should have a negative economic impact, no such impact is visible, model must therefore be correct. Nobody should listen to him.

18 points by teleforce 1y ago

They don’t care. None of the Brexit protagonists were doing it because they thought the country would be better off financially; it for them was a philosophical point about governance.

alextingle 1y ago
No it was just a lever to make the people they hate unhappy. There was a tiny group who cared about the philosophy of governance, but they were massively outnumbered by the wingnuts who thought we'd somehow be better off. But all that was completely drowned out by the avalanche of pure hate.
- robin_reala 1y ago
  Fair point, maybe I’m giving them too much credit.
ndsipa_pomu 1y ago
I thought it was more a case of making a few people a lot of money and then being able to drastically reduce human/worker rights so that company bosses could extort more money from their employees

eucryphia 1y ago

Yes, the unelected bureaucrats in Brussels will continue their punishment until the English no longer want their own parliament.

thebruce87m 1y ago
> the English Any particular reason you left the other 3 countries out?
youngtaff 1y ago
Britain isn’t part of the single market or customs union anymore so it’s treated like every other “third” country As a Britain it was obvious this would happen when we left the EU and the paperwork / costs involved with trading with the EU would rise and damage our economy We had liars and charlatans saying “we held all the cards” and leaving wouldn’t affect things and a lot of gullible people believed them Thos same liars and charlatans are now complaining about how many civil servants the UK has while neglecting the fact that we had to hire 100,000 to cope with the effects of Brexit
FranzFerdiNaN 1y ago
And how do those unelected bureaucrats (nice framing, tells a lot about who you are) punish the UK?
- general1465 1y ago
  It is also ironic framing, because main Brexit negotiator for UK has been unelected bureaucrat Lord David Frost.
general1465 1y ago
I think that you forgot /s Britain decided to leave EU, yet somehow Brits felt entitled to Single Market. It could have customs union like Turkey has, but that would require some compromises on Brexit, which cult of Brexit did not allow.
- youngtaff 1y ago
  As a Britain… I don’t think we wanted to leave the single market and I’m unconvinced that people actually wanted to leave the EU — mainly because they didn’t know what it meant and even the Brexit promoters said a Yes vote wouldn’t mean leaving the EU What they wanted to do was give the Establishment / Tories a black eye but ended up enabling the people what who were pushing for a hard Brexit that worked against most people’s interests
  - ndsipa_pomu 1y ago
    One of the things that I detest about the Brexit referendum was that "Brexit" wasn't at all defined (apart from leaving the EU). There were lots of hot air about Brexit not at all meaning a "hard" exit from the single market, and yet here we are. My favourite analogy on the referendum is having people vote on whether to have "meat" or "vegetarian" dinner: Suppose 40% of people enjoy vegetarian food, 20% only eat pork, 20% only eat beef and 20% only eat chicken. Then, after "voting", the results come in as 60% for "meat" and 40% for veg. However, what meal can you prepare to satisfy the "meat" vote considering that you can only satisfy 20% of them? (By the way, I was thrown off by your use of "As a Britain" rather than "As a Brit")
    - youngtaff 1y ago
      I never refer to myself as a Brit… I’m British or a Britain or from the UK

ChocolateGod 1y ago

Even if the UK were to rejoin the single market to try address this, I don't even think it would help much, people won't invest in the UK given the polls look like the next party would just yank the UK back out again.

yawpitch 1y ago

Ok, but at least we set the shape of our own damned bananas!

mike_hearn 1y ago

Bailey claims two things: 1. Negative impact for foreseeable future. 2. That he has always been carefully neutral, and is suddenly being forced to give his opinion. If you look at the actual data, which everyone should, it doesn't support claims like these and never has. There is no visible impact of Brexit on the economic figures. UK GDP growth hasn't departed from the other big countries in western Europe, the lines move in sync as they always did: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gdp-worldbank-constant-usd?tab=line&country=FRA~DEU~GBR https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gdp-worldbank-constant-us... You can see COVID, and the 2008 crash, but you can't see Brexit. The same happens if you look more directly at the trade figures, which does show a negative impact for about a month or two just after the new trading rules were implemented, but then immediately goes back to where it was after people figured out the new system. In most graphs you can't even see this transition period unless you zoom in, that's how short it was, and so there's just no impact on economic growth. So it turns out that single market membership had no benefit to the British economy, which is mostly services based and the single market only really tries to standardize trade in goods. This was not predicted by anyone in the media/economics profession. Academics, British government, central bankers, journalists, IMF, EU ... all of them got this dead wrong. None of them have any credibility left on the matter, yet they never show contrition. Only a handful of Brexit campaigners did correctly predict it and they get given no credit. Paul Krugman made all the usual wrong predictions before the vote, but to his minor credit did admit immediately afterwards that economists were engaged in "motivated reasoning" (i.e. lying). This is a specific example of a more general problem with the British establishment: they are willing to abuse legacy respect for institutions in order to advance their personal agendas, especially on Europe. Bailey really loves this line about how he has never taken a position. He uses it all the time. That's a good example of the kind of lying civil servants have often engaged in, this pretending to be neutral whilst actually being very biased. In reality he has criticized Brexit in the past, always with the same line about how he never takes a stance whilst simultaneously doing so. Here he is doing it in May: https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/speech/2025/may/andrew-bailey-speech-followed-by-fireside-chat-with-francine-lacqua-bloomberg?utm_source=chatgpt.com https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/speech/2025/may/andrew-baile... And in November 2024, where he "takes no position" but simultaneously "urges ministers to rebuild relations with the EU". https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/nov/14/bank-of-england-governor-urges-ministers-to-rebuild-relations-with-eu https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/nov/14/bank-of-eng... He wants to be seen as neutral whilst making claims about economics that he must know aren't true. But he's a BoE lifer and like many civil servants struggles to handle cases when reality departs from academic modeling predictions. Model says leaving EU should have a negative economic impact, no such impact is visible, model must therefore be correct. Nobody should listen to him.