Should I wait to buy because Brexit might make house prices fall?
Guardina 'homebuying expert', one V Wallis. gives the sort of reply we have come to know and love:
No, I can’t tell you what to do and nor can I predict the type of Brexit we’ll end up with next March or how it will affect house prices. But I can shed light on what the experts think. The governor of the Bank of England. Mark Carney, has warned that if it all goes horribly wrong and we face a “disorderly” Brexit (which means a no-deal one), the economy will suffer, unemployment, consumer prices and interest rates could rise while – in a worst case scenario – house prices could fall by as much as 25% to 30%. So your friends who think that house prices will fall could have a point. On the other hand, so could your friends who think that house prices will rise – although it’s more a case of prices rising but not quite as quickly as they were predicted to pre-EU referendum. Back in February this year, experts were predicting that house prices would stop going up or, at the very least, go up by no more than 1%. They weren’t far off but according to figures recently published by the Office for National Statistics, average house prices in the UK have, in fact, increased by 3.1% in the year to July 2018 (down from 3.2% in the year to June 2018).
Meanwhile, there are even more disturbing matters afoot -- a new conspiracy with a new hate figure, S Baker, an ex-Brexit minister and now a key plotter against Chequers. The Guardian subheads the story with:
Manoeuvrings of ideologically driven Tory MP may yet bring down the PM or bring Britain closer to no-deal scenario
Only opponents of Remainers are ideologically driven, of course, which makes sense if it means Remainers don't actually have an articulated view on the joys of Remaining, just a mish-mash of imagined allegiances, aggressive social distancing and identitarian hurts. But that IS ideology, even if not its 'scientific' variant. It just appears as 'common sense'.
Anyway, Baker has been unmasked by the Graun in the story that links in all sorts of alarming 'facts':
In 2015, a libertarian, religious thinktank, the American Principles Project, convened a symposium on monetary policy in Jackson Hole, Wyoming...Robert Mercer, the US billionaire behind Cambridge Analytica, was reported to have paid for the event. The Conservative MP for Wycombe, Steve Baker was a star speaker, who declared the trip in his register of interests.
Pretty good for one paragraph -- religious thinktanks, US billionaires and Cambridge Analytica.The bastard even had the effrontery to openly declare his trip!
Baker apparently is indeed some libertarian loony who 'wanted the global financial system to evolve to a free banking model, whereby the value of money would be determined by market forces alone, free from any intervention by the state or central banks.'
Unfashionable ideas [include Brexit, it is suggested?] , boldly expressed, are something of a stock in trade for Baker, whose manoeuvrings may yet bring down the prime minister, or bring the UK closer to the no-deal Brexit that only the most ideological Eurosceptics would welcome...But ideology is something that drives Baker. And one of his heroes was a man who split the Tory party – and left it in the wilderness and unable to form a government for a generation.[so that is bad for the Graun?] [And who was that awful splitter] -- the 19th-century English radical Richard Cobden, who led the campaign to abolish the Corn Laws, overturning trade restrictions on grain but splitting the Tory party in the process [and probably ending the famine in England and Ireland].
Probably a bit historical for your average millenial Graun reader but here's a bit they would respond to:
A born-again Christian, Baker has said his faith is very important to him but has written of his acceptance that it is impossible to “eradicate abortion and related actions completely”.
There might be some financial shadiness too -- the ERG [which he chairs] has received donations. The Garuan likes to spice this up with accounts of public information requests and undercover journalists :
The largest private donation of £10,000 came from a pro-Brexit businessman. But more intriguing was a £6,500 donation in December 2016 from the Constitutional Research Council....The CRC is an “unincorporated association”, which paid £435,000, supposedly the largest donation in Northern Irish history, to the Democratic Unionist party for its own pro-Brexit campaign. The identities of the CRC’s backers have never been revealed.
Baker is a disloyal sort of chap that the Graun could never support:
In recent months, he has been ever-present at events designed to undermine his prime minister...He also attended the launch by the Institute of Economic Affairs of its “Plan A+” proposal for the UK to “deliver the Brexit prize” through radical free trade deals and deep cuts to regulation with countries including the US.
Greenpeace 'undercover journalists' uncovered [sic] the dark truth about the IEA:
[They] filmed the IEA’s director, Mark Littlewood, describing how the organisation was in “the Brexit influencing game” and explaining that he had facilitated meetings between the author of the Plan A+ report, Shanker Singham, and Baker.
Guardian/Observer readers with a long-ish memory might remember that Shanker Singham was also 'linked' with outfits that linked with Cambridge Analytica. The poor chap was even accused of being the author of one of B Johnson's letters.
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