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Hardly a surprising conclusion, but surprising to see pro-EU Reuters run this… I find this self-evident:
Patrick Minford, a professor of economics at Cardiff University, said Britain should rely on tariff levels agreed at the World Trade Organisation, and that scrapping the EU’s external tariffs would lower consumer prices by 8 percent, and boost gross domestic product by 4 percent after around 10 years.
The benefits of bilateral trade deals were overrated and a lot of foreign investment was drawn to Britain by its underlying competitive strengths rather than its access to the rest of the EU, Minford said at a news conference in London organised by economists who support a so-called Brexit.
“There is no need for us to go off chasing a million trade deals with the rest of the world. They are irrelevant,” he said.
But given the flood of pro-EU scare stories that Reuters tends to run, I was a bit surprised to see it get some pixels there.
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Yes, Reuters really has been running a constant stream of sky-is-falling stories, suggesting cats will run away from home and Britain’s entire stock of tea will be eaten by weevils if the UK votes for Brexit. This story is definitely a leaker that got through the screen somehow.
I was at a meeting yesterday where a traditional UK fixed income manager was presenting. They mentioned that you can’t really take all the output of London based investment banks at face value, as, guess what, about 4/5 of investment bank staff are non-UK nationals (as an aside, this is partly due to them having access to the ‘best of Europe’ pool of graduates; also a conscious decision since it gives them the language skills to service the European client base).
To be honest I keep my own views fairly quiet at work at the moment, the pro-remain camp is being fairly vocal and not above calling ‘leave’ ‘crazy’.
The silent majority stands with Gove.
I hope.
PeterT, April 28, 2016 at 12:29 pm: “To be honest I keep my own views fairly quiet at work at the moment, the pro-remain camp is being fairly vocal and not above calling ‘leave’ ‘crazy’.”
While I know we cannot not all have the temperament of a Mark Steyn or a Milo, one can sometimes discover, in occasional one-on-ones in the coffee area, that the most vocal do not speak for all others. There’s a Don Camillo story which ends with most of the members of the local communist party executive hiding in Don Camillo’ closet, having each individually come to warn him of the assassination they agreed to in a collective meeting. I doubt it will be like that at your work, but there might be a possibility of encouraging some hesitants – or even verifying that the silent are indeed the majority.
Reuters may only occasionally let a leave story through but I’ve read enough pro-leave stuff in enough financial pages to think that ‘crazy’ would be a hard-sell in a debate.
Good post.
There’s no link to the Reuters story.
Unfortunately what Minford suggests is madness.
See http://eureferendum.com/blogview.aspx?blogno=86041
We need to win the undecided. To do so requires presenting a risk-averse, economically neutral, FUD-busting exit plan, and that is to adopt the Norway Option, at least in the interim. We cannot untangle ourselves from 40 years of integration overnight. Brexit will require a soft landing. EFTA/EEA is the way to do this. See Flexcit.
It broke for some reason, presumably something changed. I found it again and re-added it duly updated.