Brian Easton: Learning From Brexit

Whether Britain leaving the European Union was right or wrong, good or bad is for the Brits to decide. But there are lessons about international trade to be learned from Brexit, especially as it is very unusual for an economy to break so completely from its major training partner.

In Econ101 we are taught Ricardo’s theory of comparative advantage. In summary it says that specialisation makes economic sense; that it is a good idea for you (or a country) to do what you do best and trade the surplus for something you want from someone else who (or other country which) does it comparatively better. An economist then spends the rest of her or his life exploring the caveats and subtleties of the theory when it applies to the real world. It’s not logically wrong – it’s just that the real world is more complex.

Brendan O'Neill: The revenge of the technocrats

Rishi Sunak’s u-turn on scrapping EU laws should worry all who believe in democracy.

So much for the bonfire of EU laws. Rishi Sunak’s government has ditched plans to erase all EU legislation from the UK statute books by the end of 2023. It was his big promise during his leadership campaign in August last year. A ‘Ready for Rishi’ video showed piles of paper marked ‘EU legislation’ being fed into a shredder. ‘In his first 100 days as prime minister, Rishi Sunak will review or repeal post-Brexit EU laws’, the vid said. ‘Keep Brexit safe, vote Rishi Sunak’, it continued. Now he’s backtracked. Now around 800 EU-era laws are due to be revoked, leaving thousands on the books. So, seven years after 17.4million of us voted to leave the EU, we’re still labouring under EU legislation, and will be for a long time to come.

Brendan O'Neill: The knives are out for Brexit – again

Is anyone else feeling less than reassured by Rishi Sunak’s promise that Brexit is safe? The PM has denied reports that his government wants to put Britain on the path to a Swiss-style arrangement with the European Union. This would entail being outside the EU but making payments to it, aligning with Single Market rules, and even agreeing to abide by certain EU laws, as Switzerland does. In short, BRINO (Brexit In Name Only), the old Theresa May vision of being mostly out of the EU but a little bit in. ‘Soft Brexit’, as Remainers like to call it.

Point of Order: Why Britain left

If you want a palimpset of reasons for why the UK brexited the European Union, look no further than Bloomberg’s headline:

“EU Will Propose Crisis Tool for Supply Chain Emergencies: Bloc wants ability to require certain orders be prioritized; Plan expected to be made public this month; some see overreach.”

OK. And then the detail:

Melanie Phillips: Yes, it's Brexit

Four days after the trade deal was signed between the UK and the EU, few people, if any, have yet ploughed through the deal’s 1200 or so pages of dense legal text and annexes, and most of us never will.

Maybe in due course some buried horrors will emerge. But at present, it does look as if Boris Johnson really has delivered his country from the grip of the EU and restored its ability to govern itself as an independent country.

Melanie Phillips: Goodbye to the demoralised past. Hello, world

At 11 pm this evening, the United Kingdom will have left the European Union. 

These are words that, throughout the nightmare of the past three and a half years, those of us who were solid Brexiteers feared we might never be able to say.

From the moment in 2016 that Britain voted by 52-48 per cent to leave the EU, the political, intellectual and media Remainer establishment threw everything they had into stopping Brexit and reversing that people’s vote.

Melanie Phillips: A numbed electorate between devil and deep blue sea

In this most dismal and dispiriting general election, a numbed British electorate desperate to end the Brexit nightmare is instead being corralled with its hands tied behind its back towards the likely continuation of that nightmare.

One of the many fundamental negotiating errors made by Theresa May in trying to settle the terms of the UK’s Brexit withdrawal deal with the EU was to rule out leaving with no deal.

Melanie Phillips: Nigel Farage’s agonising calculation

Anthony Wells, director of political research at YouGov, says: “Nigel Farage is sending a message that you can trust Boris Johnson to deliver Brexit”.

This is untrue. Farage is not sending that message at all. Yesterday he repeated that “the direction we are going in is simply not Brexit”. He has not retreated from his opinion that the Johnson deal is a trap for the UK which, after it has left the EU will remain remain bound to it by destructive ties.

Melanie Phillips: The nightmarish election dilemma

In the coming general election, those of us who are true Brexiteers are facing a potentially nightmarish decision.

If we want to a) get Brexit finally and properly delivered and b) prevent the Labour party from gaining power, for whom do we vote? Because these two aims may well be incompatible with each other.

This is why.

Melanie Phillips: Wake up, Brexiteers – BoJo’s deal is what you once called vassalage

Nigel Farage has denounced Boris Johnson’s EU deal as “95 per cent the same” as Theresa May’s withdrawal deal, which was deemed so terrible by Remainers as well as Brexiteers that it was voted down three times by the House of Commons. 

You can watch much of his blistering speech here.

Farage’s verdict, that the Johnson deal is a reheated version of May’s deal, accords completely with what I wrote here on Friday.

He also points out that it would split the UK by effectively imposing a border down the middle of the Irish Sea, thus separating Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK.

Melanie Phillips: Boris achieves the impossible - putting lipstick on the dead parrot

Ignore all the gushing hype, the incredulous gasps of admiration that Boris (Houdini) Johnson seems to have achieved the impossible and actually agreed with those die-in-the-ditch-intransigent Eurocrats withdrawal terms for the UK to leave the EU. 

There’s only one question that matters. Is this actually Brexit, or is it Brexit in name only which will leave the UK still shackled to the EU? While I reserve final judgment until I’ve had the opportunity to study the small print, it looks horribly like the latter.

Stephen Franks: UK Supreme Court prorogue decision

I was surprised, like most lawyers I suspect, that the UK Supreme Court decision was unanimous.  A few recent days in London soaking up the fevered writings of UK journalists left no doubt that judges steeped in London establishment sentiment would be tempted to consider it God’s work to throw a spanner in Boris Johnson’s spokes if they could.

But I assumed that at least some would affirm the approach of the High Court below, with the traditional caution about entanglement in matters that should be resolved politically. For centuries such judicial restraint that has helped keep UK courts and judges somewhat insulated from waves of popular dissatisfaction with politics and politicians.

Melanie Phillips: The staggering hypocrisy of the Remainers’ legality gambit

The hue and cry about Boris Johnson breaking the law if he refuses to request an extension to Article 50, as demanded by the law that parliament has now passed, is beyond staggering.

Yes, the prime minister should obey laws based by parliament. But what if those laws are themselves the product of an abuse of process? Don’t any Remainers care about that? (please don’t all answer at once.)

Melanie Phillips: Glad, confident morning for Britain’s battling Brexiteers? Er, not quite

Suddenly Brexit has become possible, coo the newspapers this morning; and suddenly, this Brexiteer’s heart stops for the umpteenth time during this national crisis. 

For what they are saying has now suddenly become possible is not Brexit — which, after all, Britain’s new prime minister, Boris Johnson, has been intoning like a stuck record will happen on October 31 even with no deal – but Brexit with a withdrawal deal with the EU.

Bob Edlin: Brexit forecasts are getting more optimistic

As the likelihood of Britain leaving the EU without a formal agreement increases, expectations of the impact are more benign.  

Britain’s independent Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) ran some numbers and chose the scenario (note – not forecast) of a mild recession with a 2.1% drop in GDP in the event of a no-deal Brexit.  It’s a long way from the terrifying 8% crash in GDP scenario (obviously based on different assumptions) put out by the Bank of England last November.

The OBR bases its thinking on the IMF’s Brexit scenarios published earlier this year in its World Economic Outlook [see pages 28 – 31 of the report].  Assuming that no-deal would result in WTO tariffs, an increase in non-tariff barriers (eg, restrictions on financial services), reduction in migration from EU to UK, and higher interest rates, the IMF modeled UK GDP falling between 1 – 1.5%.  If there were also border disruption, GDP might decline 2.5 – 3%.  The IMF also models a respectable economic recovery under both scenarios.

Melanie Phillips: Ruthless Johnson signals “Brexit do or die”

The commentariat has been utterly convulsed by the composition of new prime minister Boris Johnson’s government. 

As Remainer ministers and those disloyal to Johnson were either sacked or fell on their swords to be replaced by Brexiteers in every key position, Brexit supporters were as ecstatic as Remainers were choked with horror and rage.

Johnson’s purpose in effecting this ruthless transformation was clear: to send an unequivocal signal that the Remainers’ game is now up. Britain will be leaving the EU on October 31, “do or die”. 

James Delingpole: Three Years Ago We Voted Brexit. Here’s Why We Haven’t Got It…

Today is the third anniversary of the EU Referendum. Like all Brexiteers, I can remember exactly where I was when I heard the result. And more importantly, I remember exactly how it felt. 

It felt as people must have done on VE Day. (Quite appropriate, really, given what the E in VE Day stands for…)

It felt how that preeminent knight of the Crusades Reynald de Chatillon must have felt on his release after years in the lightless, airless, foetid dungeons of Aleppo.

Melanie Phillips: How the Tories Can Save Themselves and Brexit

A general election in Britain in the near future is surely well-nigh inescapable. Whoever wins the Conservative leadership election — and as we can see from the histrionics of the past few days, Boris Johnson may end up destroying himself — both Johnson and his rival, Jeremy Hunt, have committed themselves to leaving the EU with no-deal on October 31 if they cannot renegotiate the withdrawal terms.

Since it seems overwhelmingly likely — regardless of Johnson’s claims to the contrary — that the EU will not offer any concessions, the new prime minster will therefore be declaring that the UK will leave on October 31 with no deal (unless of course he weasels out of his no-deal commitment, an outcome which would surely surprise no-one).

Bob Edlin: What would a no-deal Brexit look like?

Throughout the Brexit negotiations, the media have struggled to describe how a no-deal Brexit might work.  Understandable really, as it all depends on the actions the parties take; the responses to each other’s actions; and adaptation to new policy realities.

The most recent effort from The Times (see here) sacrificed clarity for comprehensiveness, listing outcomes ranging from the far-fetched (that aerospace companies will abandon their investments and skilled workers and decamp to Europe and China) to the near-inevitable (that volume car manufacturing in the UK is facing serious restructuring). But in speculating on outcomes, it might have missed a chance to explain the choices driving them.

Karl du Fresne: Perhaps they should listen rather than sneer

During a visit to Wellington earlier this year, John Podesta, a man described as a top American political adviser, gave a series of media interviews.

Among other things, he praised our “superstar” prime minister and said she had given hope to social democrats everywhere.

Jacinda Ardern’s election success in 2017, Podesta said, was a bright spot at a time when populist movements were winning political success around the world – a trend Podesta obviously saw as undesirable.