I’ve posted quite a few times about Julian Jessop, an economist and enthusiastic Brexit supporter. He is the Chief Economist and Head of the Brexit Unit at the IEA, once of Tufton Street London, the ground zero of British Euroscepticism. You can’t get much more of a Brexiteer than that. He has a piece in The Telegraph this week rejecting the widely held view among remainers that Brexit is costing £100 billion a year in lost GDP and £40 billion in tax revenues. He’s right in so much as the OBR, from where the figure comes, has always been clear that this will be reached in about 2035.
Jessop is reduced to arguing not that Brexit has been a huge success, but that it hasn’t been as bad as some claim. In short, he is saying the remain side were right but not as right as they thought. It’s hardly a winning argument is it? I'm not sure he realises how pathetic it looks given the hype used to sell the project in 2016.
A lot of remainers believe we’re already £100 billion down and there are serious economists like John Springford at the Centre for European Reform who have studied the issue in detail who would agree with them. The fact is that it’s very hard to say with any certainty what the actual figure is and both sides naturally like to exaggerate their case.
What isn’t in doubt is that trade has been hit. We know this anecdotally and via the official figures showing trade both EU and non EU, has been negatively impacted but sometimes people compare things now with what they were before Brexit without considering what they should be, given that world trade has seen a big post-Covid boost. That can make a substantial difference.
Jessop's article isn't unusual. He usually pops up to offer his take on the subject whenever negative reports appear in the press. In fact his own website is virtually dedicated to the task. Last November he did the same when Treasury minister Tulip Siddiq said 60% of the economic impact of Brexit was yet to materialise.
Everybody is wrong apparently, except him of course.
A week before the referendum, Jessop was working for Capital Economics and he was quoted in Business Insider saying that Brexit would be a "damp squib." He claimed market volatility would "calm down" when the result came out on June 24 (in fact sterling fell dramatically and has barely recovered). Jessop also thought the Remain camp would stop "scaremongering" and simply accept the result.
He also suggested at one point that the EU would offer us a deal on financial services and that Michel Barnier's initial "Scrooge act should fool no-one." If they didn't, we should just go ahead and do as Johnson had threatened, make a "clean break" and leave with no deal. That would show Brussels. In fact, BoJo has admitted in his book Unleashed that he was only bluffing. The EU weren't taken in but amazingly Jessop was. Barnier wasn't trying to deceive us, the EU never offered a deal to help The City.
When garden centres and horticulturalists suggested shortages might be seen when the new rules on plant imports took effect in April 2024 he said businesses would find "work arounds" as if handicapping an entire sector of the economy was fine and could be a cost-free option.
In October 2022 he together with Graham Gudgin and Harry Western produced what they called a "major report" on the impact of Brexit which concluded there was "no hard evidence that Brexit has had a negative impact on the UK economy."
The problem for Jessop is that he is just as biased if not more so than anyone else and regardless of that we don't see glossy downloadable reports from reputable bodies and think-tanks confirming all the fabulous claims made by the Leave side in 2016. What we do get from the OBR, IFS, IMF, Bloomberg, Goldman Sachs, NIESR, CER, Aston University, the LSE and any number of other serious organisations is well-researched stuff showing Brexit is having a large negative impact with no upsides.
The latest is from the British Chambers of Commerce who are demanding closer ties with the EU to avoid the mountain of paperwork that Brexit has delivered.
Jessop is like King Canute trying to hold back the tide of bad news.
