Suella Fernandes' remarks, made some time ago, that a no deal Brexit would be "great" for the UK, are reported widely in today's newspapers (HERE). She really is as stupid as she looks and will therefore be a perfect fit in DEXEU. She says in 15 years time Brexit “will be seen as the best thing that has happened to our country”.
One is tempted to ask if anyone really knows what will happen in five years time let alone 15. Economists were attacked for spending months carefully preparing forecasts (invariably gloomy) about the British economy that were dismissed by her new boss as wrong, but Ms Fernandes doesn't do detail and simply declares Brexit to be the best thing.
She ignores reality. In the 1880s Britain, with the empire at its zenith, was known as the workshop of the world. We had a captive market and a ready supply of low priced raw materials. It was impossible to fail. Now we have neither and this makes it much more difficult to succeed.
After the peak around 1880 our manufacturing industry began to shrink and over the next century it declined consistently as new competitors entered the industrial revolution and is now around 10% of the economy. The services sector grew as manufacturing declined not due to any political plan, but more out of necessity. We are now said to be "good" at services but not so "good" at manufacturing. Is this really true? I have my doubts.
Brexit assumes we will trade our way to prosperity and since services are 80% of the economy, and foreign companies own a huge amount of what is left of UK manufacturing, services must take the lead. But I believe there is a huge risk that what happened to manufacturing in the twentieth century will happen to services in the twenty first. In fact, if we look at the evidence it is virtually a certainty.
As new competitor countries enter the market, understand what we are doing and how, they will begin to copy and there is a big risk they will overtake us just as they did in manufacturing. I do not see anything to prevent it.
