Dominic Lawson, son of the former chancellor and climate change denier Nigel Lawson, writes a column for the Sunday Times and on Sunday (HERE) he produced one that I hope we can throw back at him in a year or two. He rather sneeringly refers to us as the remoaner resistance and sarcastically tells us we are ignoring good economic news because it's bad for the remain side. But he is guilty of a bit of cherry picking himself.
The unemployment figures last week showed we reached the lowest recorded figure since 1975 but he ignores the fact we are still in the EU, Brexit hasn't happened yet. This is how disastrous our membership of the EU has been, delivering full employment! We are just five months after Article 50 and it is impossible to see the figure going much lower. In other words we have reached a level where the only direction unemployment is going from now is UP. We will soon be able to compare things.
He then says people are still coming from EU states like Germany, Italy, Spain and France to work which they may well be doing - but at a lower rate than before and surely this is what Brexit is designed to STOP.
Exports have risen by 16% since the referendum he claims although I don't see this number on the ONS site. Total exports have increased by about 10% since June 2016 but imports have risen even faster, in spite of the slump in Sterling, and our trade gap has actually worsened. He thinks Brussels has shifted it's position and will allow trade talks simultaneously with the "divorce bill" - provided there is sufficient progress on the latter. This has been the EU's position since the negotiations started so it's hard to see where Mr Lawson is coming from. And we will see in the next few weeks what happens to trade talks.
Then stunningly he says Brussels, acting for the EU 27, "doesn't really know what it wants". This in spite of the Commission setting out in April this year with crystal clarity detailed position papers on what it wants from the first three issues in the first phase of negotiations. By comparison we have belatedly produced some vague waffle on two of the three issues four months after triggering Article 50!
He says some Britons hope "that their own country will be punished and humiliated". I don't think we need to worry about someone doing that to us. We have already done it to ourselves.
