The IEA report I posted about on Tuesday has taken a pounding from the experts although Catherine MacBride who wrote the thing is still defending it on social media. The best, most detailed, and comprehensive takedown so far is one by Gerhard Schneider who writes a regular (and regularly brilliant) blog about Brexit and its continuing aftermath. I confess I wish I could write a critique of half that quality but sadly I can’t. Read it HERE.
As I said MacBride is not an economist with any academic qualifications, or at least they’re not listed in her IEA biography at any rate, but she takes on the cream of Britain’s economic experts, commentators, and forecasters. That takes a bit of nerve but the IEA is not lacking in that as we know.
The report is certainly well written and well-argued, and on the surface even plausible, like a legal argument put forward by a KC representing a career criminal he knows is guilty. It has the capacity to help convince people who are already certain that Brexit hasn’t "had a major detrimental effect on UK–EU trade" and nothing for those who can see that it has, except perhaps to pile on even more cynicism about how we're governed.
And therein lies the purpose of it.
The IEA is unlike most think tanks (although unfortunately, it isn't alone) in that it doesn't do real research which can then be used to present a conclusion. No, it decides the conclusion first then dresses up figures that support it in order to garner headlines and sway opinion. And it succeeded because it 'spoon-feeds lazy journalists' who used it to produce copy.
At one point (page 27) MacBride says; "But the external studies the OBR references were all written in 2016 before the referendum and mostly by organisations who were publicly hostile to Brexit." This is true, but only because they were in the majority, the only one in favour was Patrick Minford who has been consistently wrong in his forecasts.
She also assumes the organisations that were hostile to Brexit, work in similar fashion to the IEA, producing forecasts to suit their own narrow agenda. The fact that they might have become hostile after the research showed the damage Brexit would cause doesn't occur to her at all.
This isn't even to mention her own motives at the IEA, which is hardly independent. When you've got a plank in your own eye it really doesn't help your case when you point out the 'mote' in your opponents.
The Daily Mail gratefully turned it into: Brexit has NOT damaged UK trade with the EU despite dire warnings from Remainers as exports of goods and services both continued to rise after the UK left the single market, report argues.
Over at the Daily Telegraph, they declared: OBR forecasts that Brexit would damage UK-EU trade are unfounded, says IEA
Guido Fawkes, the worst scandal sheet of the lot by a big margin: UK-EU Trade Not Affected by Brexit Despite Dire Predictions
And at the Daily Express, they used the words of Trade Secretary Kemi Badenoch in a pre-released speech to launch International Trade Week, an event sponsored by her department this week to urge on British exporters: 'Stop talking ourselves down!' Kemi Badenoch blasts Brexit doom-mongers as exports soar. CityAM had an almost identical copy: UK must stop talking itself down, says Badenoch as report shows Brexit hasn’t hurt trade.
Badenoch, a cabinet minister, was expected to describe the IEA report as “excellent” and say: “This is why I just don’t agree with the narrative that Brexit has ‘severely damaged’ our economy.”
A genuine trade expert, David Henig, described her use of the IEA's report as a humiliation:
This should be a humiliation for a Secretary of State of Trade, to be associated with such shoddy research attempting to deny economic reality. That's what happens when ideology is more important than actual businesses. https://t.co/5lEC1gaJBT pic.twitter.com/MLkuKtzTcP
— David Henig 🇺🇦 (@DavidHenigUK) November 6, 2023
Imagine a minister in any government anywhere, with huge resources at his or her fingertips, access to all the expertise money can buy, perhaps one who set up an independent body like the OBR to restore faith in economic forecasts, having to endorse a report by a shadowy, opaquely funded 'think-tank' to back-up official policy against her own civil servants.
It's yet another bizarre moment in the long Brexit saga that passes almost without comment.
Finally, an interesting post from @vivamjm which I confess I had never considered. He poses this question: Which CPTPP member is going to invest in Britain to help us export to the EU or to.....errr the CPTPP?
You don't have to think very long to realise nobody is going to do it because it doesn't make any commercial or economic sense.
Yet EU member states - Germany is the best known - with many companies who invested here to support businesses like Mini for example, have helped the UK export globally. That investment is now all gone
