Britain’s productivity flatlined in 2008, eight years before the referendum. Brexit added cost, and serious frictions but the real causes run deeper: weak investment, weak industrial strategy, and an employment model that grew jobs while output per hour stalled. Even Northern Ireland, the one part of the UK with a genuinely distinctive post-Brexit settlement, tells the same story.
The chart below probably does more to sum up the economic histories of Ireland and the UK in recent decades than any other. Taken from countryeconomy.com it compares Irish and UK GDP per capita growth since 1970. Of course, here is an argument that Irish GDP is somewhat inflated by the activities of global corporations located here, but what I want to focus on is the trend. Irish and UK GDP per capita tracked each other quite closely until about …
It shows the massive size of the US economy that one State alone has just overtaken the UK to become the World’s 5th largest economy. As reported by NBC NEWS: California’s economy has surpassed that of the United Kingdom to become the world’s fifth largest, according to federal data made public Friday. California’s gross domestic product rose by $127 billion from 2016 to 2017, surpassing $2.7 trillion, the data said. Meanwhile, the UK’s economic output slightly shrunk over that time when …
Here’s a confusing financial press headline from today: German 10-year sovereign bond yields turn negative for first time. What does that mean in plain English: it means traders are so worried about what the UK economy would look like post-Brexit, they’re pulling their money out of the UK, and actually paying the German government to let them lend it money. Read that sentence again to realise how deep the fear is. You’ve heard the scaremongering. This is what the reality …
