I like to keep an eye on Brexit Central which continues relentlessly pumping out its pro-Brexit message although the thin gruel it serves up is getting thinner all the time. Two items demonstrate what a struggle they're having to get any meat and gravy. Recently it published an article (HERE) by Ewen Stewart, described as Director of the Eurosceptic think tank Global Britain and a regular writer on economic and political affairs. Personally, I've never heard of him and I doubt if many others have either but nevertheless Brexit Central gives him a slot.
His sparkling, upbeat assessment of the economy is titled: Global Britain just became the world’s top investment destination (despite Brexit, of course).
His article is about how Britain continues to be a magnet for foreign direct investment (FDI) and in it he makes this claim:
"Last week the UK was acclaimed as the global number one for investment – displacing the US, an economy nine times our size".
This was a surprise to me so I Googled the phrase - and got Ewen Stewart's article, nothing else. I tried again and again, using different terms and words, nothing. Try as I might I cannot find the source for his claim. I don't say it's wrong, only that there appears to be zero evidence for it - as far as I can tell.
What I did find, from The Commons Library, in a studiously non-partisan reference is a briefing paper (HERE) published on 4th April 2019 just a few weeks ago, with the title: Where does the UK rank in foreign direct investment statistics? The figures in the paper are from 2017 - the latest available it seem so where Ewen gets his numbers from I do not know.
The Commons Library shows FDI fell by 50% in 2017, albeit from a very high figure in 2016. It gives quite a balanced picture and while FDI has continued there is no evidence that suggests we have overtaken the USA or will ever do so. What it does show is something else, this is in outward investment from the UK, British companies investing overseas. This is what it says:
"In 2017, outward flows of FDI from the UK were worth £91.4 billion – this follows three successive years of net disinvestment between 2014 and 2016 and represents the UK’s highest level of outward FDI flows since 2008".
What does this tell us? After the referendum there has been a surge in British investment abroad, reversing a three year trend. I wonder why that was? No prizes for guessing.
And while the paper doesn't give us our global position in FDI into this country last year, in terms of the stock of FDI (the total accumulated FDI a country has) it says this:
"Since 2015, the UK has been ranked third behind the USA and Hong Kong. In 2017, the value of the stock of inward FDI in the UK was $1.6 trillion, behind Hong Kong at $2.0 trillion and the USA at $7.8 trillion (the stock of FDI inward FDI essentially means the accumulated total of inward FDI into the UK over the years)".
In any case I am not convinced being at the top of the FDI league is necessarily a good thing. If a foreign buyer purchases a British company or invests in starting a new business in the UK to serve the domestic market only this means the profits from that business will be repatriated to the foreign owners and investors with no real gain for this country. It is FDI in exporting companies that we need. Nissan in Sunderland is the best case in point since half its output goes to the EU, thus adding to our balance of trade as a surplus and reducing the massive deficit we have.
Brexit will not increase the prospect of foreign companies investing here in order to export to Europe. It wouldn't make any sense at all to do that. Why invest where there are barriers to trade with the biggest near market when you can place yourself inside the barriers?
Next, Brexit Central has a piece (HERE) by Jonathan Isaby who runs the site claiming that former ministers (Nicky Morgan and Greg Hands) are to chair a "new initiative pursuing alternative arrangements for the Irish border".
It was all rather unfortunate then for Jonathan Isaby that yesterday on national TV Iain Duncan Smith was publicly made to look even sillier that he usually is by Pascal Lamy (HERE), for suggesting there were any sort of 'alternative arrangements' at all that could solve the Irish border problem.
Mr Lamy is a former EU trade commissioner and two-term head of the WTO. I doubt if there is a man or woman on the planet who knows more about the EU and international trade than him - but IDS actually tried to tell him there could be trade across Ireland without a hard border, something Lamy described as 'pie in the sky'. This unwittingly gave us the Brexit problem in a nut shell. Faced with the world's foremost expert, Brexiteers simply refuse to engage with reality and continue to believe they're right even when it is carefully explained how and why they're wrong.
I don't suppose IDS left the studio doubting himself in any way. He's a Brexiteer, they don't do introspection do they?.
It doesn't help matters when The Daily Express (HERE - you have to see this for yourself) when it headlines the story: "Iain Duncan Smith leaves former WTO chief in a DAZE – outlines BRILLIANT Brexit solution"
Words fail.
And so another day begins in Brexit fantasy land, scripted by knaves to make a trap for fools - to quote Kipling.
