Another Brexiteer economic forecast is proved wrong

Yesterday, I quoted a Daily Mail report from Saturday about the UK economy: Don't expect a miracle year. This was in connection with forecasts for 2020.  Oddly, Larry Ellison in an article for The Guardian also used the same word yesterday, but he was talking about the year 2010 when he said nobody expected a miracle then. What they did expect was a reasonably quick recovery from the depth of a huge financial crisis with the stuttering economy picking up speed and then going through "a couple of years of rapid growth to compensate for the lost output in 2008-09 and then return to its pre-crisis trend rate of growth, which had been in the region of 2.5% a year."

THE MINFORD BREXIT PLAN FOR THE UK CAR INDUSTRY

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.

MINFORD'S CHUTZPAH

Patrick Minford, the Brexiteers favourite economist and the only one who sees a massive positive impact in the UK leaving the world's biggest and richest trading bloc, has a piece on Brexit Central (HERE). Mainstream economists, with virtual unanimity, say Brexit will have greater or lesser negative consequences and many of them ridicule Minford for (a) making completely ridiculous assumptions and (b) never publishing the background to his conclusions. With Olympic class chutzpah his latest article accuses Phillip Hammond of the same faults.

PATRICK MINFORD - ECONOMIST AND CHARLATAN

Professor Patrick Minford is the economist and pin-up boy for Brexiteers. He's almost unique in advocating lowering tariffs and standards to zero and importing anything and everything from anywhere, something he openly admits would "eliminate manufacturing" in this country. I assume he thinks we can all work in the hospitality industry to welcome visitors who will be curious to see our post industrial living museum? Anyway he has an article in Brexit Central (HERE). It's worth a read to see how wrong he is.

HOW REALITY IS FORCING ITS WAY IN

In total contrast to what Sir Ivan Rogers said yesterday, the dangerous simpleton John Longworth on Sunday told Brexit Central readers (HERE) that it was his organisation, Leave means Leave, who coined the "no deal is better than a bad deal" slogan and he seemed quite proud of it. But whereas Sir Ivan explained this was not credible and "both sides" know it (HERE), Longworth says it's our "best and last hope".

LONGWORTH & MINFORD v CARNEY

Our old imbecile mate John Longworth has been writing again on Brexit Central (HERE) and quoting figures from that other idiot from Economists with Learning Difficulties, Patrick Minford, that claim by leaving the EU and adopting "global trade" the EU (yes, the EU!) will lose £507 billion and the UK will gain £650 billion over 10 years. This is obviously why the EU is making all the demands in the negotiations while we are making all the concessions.

ROGER BOOTLE

Roger Bootle from Capital Economics often writes in The Telegraph, usually completely delusional stuff about Brexit and the strength of our economy. He wrote such a column yesterday (HERE) contrasting the political turmoil (his word) with the economic reality. What he knows about reality could easily fit on the back of a postage stamp. He is also urging the government to stand firm and refuse to pay any money "for access to the single market".

PATRICK MINFORD

I am not an economist and economics can be a bit of a pseudo science at the best of times, full of assumptions, technical jargon and mumbo jumbo. There is often serious disagreement. It is said if you put ten economists in a room together you would end up with eleven opinions. So, in the Brexit debate there has been a surprising degree of unanimity. I think at least 95% of them believe Brexit, to a greater or lesser degree, will be bad for the economy but this leaves a tiny minority who think the opposite.