What a hoot Patrick Minford, the leader of Economists for Free Trade (also known as Economists with Learning Difficulties) is. Someone posted on another blog a session of evidence he gave to the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee in 2012 on the future of the EU which was quite an eye opener. You can read the transcript HERE.
The main reason for his name being mentioned was some rather ominous comments he made about the car industry six years ago, which I'll come to in a minute, but I noticed Minford also had this exchange with Rory Stewart MP:
The main reason for his name being mentioned was some rather ominous comments he made about the car industry six years ago, which I'll come to in a minute, but I noticed Minford also had this exchange with Rory Stewart MP:
Q120 Rory Stewart: What relationship would you like the UK to have with the European Union? What sort of model are you looking at? What seems plausible and what would be in the United Kingdom’s interests?
Professor Minford: I think it was a mistake to join, and I think we should just leave. It is very straightforward. [...]
I think we are powerless to use any leverage. We do not have any leverage over this that would give us the scope to renegotiate. I don’t think the renegotiation agenda is logical; it has no force. You cannot in practice get a renegotiation. I think you have to say, "We’re leaving." At which point, if you leave, you simply repeal that treaty-the 1973 treaty; it is a one-line repeal, and you start again. You renegotiate effectively, or negotiate, a completely fresh set of relationships that are suitable.
The "one-line repeal" is the EU (Withdrawal) Act 2018, 107 pages long with 25 sections and nine schedules (HERE), this is apart from the 800-1000 Statutory Instruments that are also needed. Minford is a professor and thought Brexit would be "straightforward" and you "simply" repeal the 1973 treaty. We can now see how stupidly wrong he was. How can anyone trust his judgement?
But now turning to his thoughts on the UK car industry - the industry that provides 12% of our exports and employs 850,000 workers directly and in the supply chains. This is what he said in 2012 in answer to John Baron MP, a leading Eurosceptic and now Brexiteer (Q117 in the transcript):
Professor Minford: [..] If we left the EU, we would immediately join the world market in cars. One can see that you need some transitional arrangements for the car industry, because there would be quite a big transition from the protected status to the unprotected status where you were competing with cars from all over the world and the prices would drop. I think, for practical reasons, transitional arrangements have to be considered. I imagine that there would be a particular arrangement for cars and other particularly protected industries that would suffer a big transitional loss. It is standard when you do reforms that have long-run consequences that are good that you have to have transitional arrangements. That would be the sort of thing to look at-particular interests that would suffer from loss of protection.
He euphemistically talks of transitions and long run consequences but what he is discussing is no less than the destruction of the UK car industry. And later (Q138 in the transcript) he makes it even clearer:
Professor Minford: [..] If, for some reason, there were no willingness by the other countries’ car owners and governments to co-operate in this [agreeing a ten year transition] and there were a faster run-down of our car industry as a result of that lack of co-operation, we would have to compensate them in a way rather like the steel and coal industry. Those were not economic industries. That is a quite good parallel. If you have an industry that is not economic, it is your interests to run it down. Obviously, it would be nice if others would co-operate in parallel in the run-down so that it puts less of a cost on you but if, in the end, you have to do it yourself, you are still better off.
Professor Minford: [..] If we left the EU, we would immediately join the world market in cars. One can see that you need some transitional arrangements for the car industry, because there would be quite a big transition from the protected status to the unprotected status where you were competing with cars from all over the world and the prices would drop. I think, for practical reasons, transitional arrangements have to be considered. I imagine that there would be a particular arrangement for cars and other particularly protected industries that would suffer a big transitional loss. It is standard when you do reforms that have long-run consequences that are good that you have to have transitional arrangements. That would be the sort of thing to look at-particular interests that would suffer from loss of protection.
He euphemistically talks of transitions and long run consequences but what he is discussing is no less than the destruction of the UK car industry. And later (Q138 in the transcript) he makes it even clearer:
Professor Minford: [..] If, for some reason, there were no willingness by the other countries’ car owners and governments to co-operate in this [agreeing a ten year transition] and there were a faster run-down of our car industry as a result of that lack of co-operation, we would have to compensate them in a way rather like the steel and coal industry. Those were not economic industries. That is a quite good parallel. If you have an industry that is not economic, it is your interests to run it down. Obviously, it would be nice if others would co-operate in parallel in the run-down so that it puts less of a cost on you but if, in the end, you have to do it yourself, you are still better off.
He openly talks about running down our car industry and "compensating" the workers, presumably as they cheerfully move from highly paid jobs on the German and Japanese production lines to picking strawberries and making jam for export to Patagonia and other far flung places. Minford is on record saying that Brexit would mostly "eliminate manufacturing" in this country and seems quite sanguine about it.
How casually he talks about some very painful adjustments for thousands and thousands of families. He can't be bothered to think about ways to make industries more efficient or economic, his economist/accountant answer is to close them down, throw people out of work and find something else to do.
All well and good for a wealthy professor of economics, eh?
