New figures for the side of the bus

The indispensable Briefings for Britain this week has a careful analysis of the sum saved by NOT continuing to contribute to the EU since 2016.

For newer readers of this blog, the sums actually contributed were of course a major aspect of the Referendum campaign and the debate since, and the claim by Vote Leave that the UK contributed £350m a week (£18.2billion a year) to the EU budget was pasted on the side of their campaign bus. The slogan was completed by a plea to spend this money on the NHS instead. The sum was denounced as a straightforward 'lie' in furious Remain pieces,and the 'lie on the bus' is still referred to casually on things like Newsnight on the BBC. The lie was that the £350m was a gross contribution not allowing for the 'rebate' from the EU. The Treasury assured the public the net sum was a mere £8.5bn a year in 2015. That was about 10% of the total EU budget then.

O'Connell argues that allowing for the stated expansion of the EU budget, the payments agreed under the Withdrawal Agreement for things like contributions to pensions for British EU employees,and converting to present values, the authors estimate the savings from withdrawal currently to be £525 billion. This is on top of the sums agreed for pensions etc.This is just contributions, and does not consider any broader cost-benefit analysis, like any claimed boosts to trade or exports.(These are well discussed,very sceptically,  in the new book by Tombs and Gudgin mentioned last time -- Brexit The Facts Strike Back).

The piece is carefully argued, with a range of estimates according to the robustness of the data reviewed. Calculations are included of cases where the UK rebate is both increased and decreased (the latter is more likely,they think: 'The Commission proposed abolishing or radically reforming rebates as part of Own Resources reform'), and the presentation of sterling values assumes a similar rate of exchange with the euro.  However, there is  a general reliance on robust data, including the EU's own estimates of the growth of its budget, and UK Treasury and OBR [Office for Budget Responsibility] statements, and an overall high confidence in the calculations.

 Overall:

 

The fiscal saving is large in isolation. It represents real public finance resources that the UK has not had to and will not have to transfer to Brussels.

The settlement payments are small relative to the avoided contribution stream. The remaining liability of £5.3bn (nominal) is approximately 1% of the central NPV [net present value] estimate. Arguments that the ‘divorce bill’ negates the fiscal saving are numerically weak: even including the full £30.9bn HMT settlement total (including Transition Period payments) [our liability until 2065] , this represents approximately 6% of the central NPV.

 

 

Rejoin the agreeable discussions of world politics

A good piece, trailed in Briefings from Britain today, by R Tombs in Spiked,trying to puzzle out exactly what the case is for Rejoin.

As he notes, the economic arguments during the Referendum were motivated by Operation Fear, and the arguments now seems to depend on dubious comparisons with 'doppelganger' economies (much criticised, including in this blog -- which countries do you compare with the UK? How do you control the other variables like the Crash of 2008, oil price rises, wars, embargoes, Covid and policies like aiming for net zero?).

As a commentary in Briefings... puts it  

the Remain view (also a feature of the BBC documentary) ...[is that].. the years between 2016 and 2026 are abridged: ... there is a straight line from the referendum to soaring debt, poor productivity and border chaos. Remain, in this view, is vindicated. The lockdowns and failures of individual politicians are secondary consequences: Brexit is the first cause of our present woes.   

So what does that leave? Tombs seems to argue towards an autonomy for the political interests of what he comes close to identifying as a ruling class or elite. These are expressed in 'political' and personal terms -- they want to be included in  major political and economic decisions and the UK is no longer a big enough actor on the ''world stage'. First they pinned their hopes in the Commonwealth as a kind of free trade dominion,then the stages of the EU -- the initial Coal and Steel Community, the Common Market etc. They never committed to the ideology of European unification,unlike the political elite in European countries,most of whom had unfortunate pasts to live down and persistent rivalries to manage.

So there still is no strong case for Rejoin, or not one that can have public appeal. It has ideological appeal, but even there it is ill-formed, never quite explicit (it would be laughable if it were made explicit). The most popular aspects of it, like nationalism and patriotism, are self-defeating and anyway better expressed by various emergent right-wing alternatives,not monopolised by the major traditional political parties since the first decade of this century.

To put it bluntly -- what is the appeal of promoting the ideological interests, the wishes to belong, to have seats at various tables, to find a  new role fro themselves, of privileged knobs? 

 

The Briefings team have also produced a book. I have it. I'll deliver some summaries. Meanwhile, buy it on Amazon here 

Brexit: The Facts Strike Back

by Robert Tombs (Author), Graham Gudgin CBE (Author), Nick Busvine (Contributor), & 2 more

 

 

BBC admits Brexit bias but fails to acknowledge its ideology

Briefings for Britain this week contains an article by D Keighley of  News-Watch (mentioned a couple of times in this blog) which has been monitoring BBC output for years and continually argued for the existence of evidence based on various simple measures of bias. They have also been continually dismissed, usually by the BBC loftily claiming that the professional judgement of its broadcasters outweighs any mere academic analysis by outsiders. They are nice people, how can they be biased?

This time it is different (nearly):

On 4 June, the BBC’s Executive Complaints Unit (ECU) partially upheld a News-watch complaint about an item broadcast on Radio 4’s Today programme on 15 November 2024.  This is the first time that the BBC has formally accepted that one of our complaints about the impartiality of its Brexit coverage was justified. 

BBC Europe correspondent Katya Adler reported that [The Governor of the Bank of England, A Bailey]  had claimed that Brexit was one of the main reasons why the British economy was not performing as well as it could. Two guests were then invited to discuss his allegation: Sir John Gieve, a former deputy governor of the Bank, and Liam Byrne, the Labour MP and chairman of the Business and Trade Select Committee.

Both men broadly accepted Bailey’s diagnosis. The discussion then moved towards the same policy conclusion: Britain should reduce friction with the EU and pursue closer alignment....No guest was present to argue that Britain’s economic difficulties might instead be addressed by using more energetically the freedoms gained through Brexit.

The ECU [Executive Complaints Unit] accepted part of the complaint.... the competing arguments — closer EU alignment or greater exploitation of opportunities outside the EU — were “so clearly a controversial matter” that Today should at least have acknowledged the alternative. Its failure to do so fell below the BBC’s standards of impartiality. 

However, the ECU then defended the BBC against the charge of systematic bias, using an old argument we have seen before, voiced famously by none other than Emily Maitlis:

that Bailey’s diagnosis was broadly correct. This, [the Head of ECU] argued, reflected the predominant view among economists, and he had found no significant [NB] body of opinion maintaining that Brexit’s economic effect so far had been beneficial or even neutral....a BBC spokesman insisted that the BBC itself had “no view” on Brexit’s impact and was merely explaining the economic consensus.

 In response, Keighley points out that:

The BBC says it has no view, while granting one side of a contested argument the status of an authoritative consensus which need not be seriously challenged. That is not neutrality. It is a highly biased  editorial judgement about which claims count as established and which may be treated as marginal.

Brexit is not a controlled experiment. Its economic consequences cannot be isolated with scientific precision from the pandemic, the war in Ukraine, energy prices, inflation, interest rates, taxation, regulation, migration, political instability or the decisions of successive British governments. The headline estimates most frequently cited are produced by counterfactual models comparing actual performance with an imagined Britain that remained inside the EU.

Such models may be useful, but they are not observable facts. Their assumptions can be disputed, and they cannot determine how Britain might have performed had governments pursued different tax, energy, regulatory or trade policies after leaving.

Indeed, Sir John Gieve himself acknowledged during the Today discussion that measuring Brexit’s impact was “extremely difficult” and that economic models were not good at measuring large shocks. That caveat ought to have encouraged rigorous questioning. Instead, it was submerged beneath an editorial structure that moved smoothly from “Brexit has caused damage” to “closer alignment is the remedy”....

Keighley gets close to a general understanding of ideology as a whole structure of argument, often not conscious, but assumed as normal judgement: 

skewed framing: the premise chosen for discussion, the credentials accorded to particular sources, the selection of guests, the questions not asked and the range of policy solutions deemed respectable.

 Keighley points out that 'There is, of course,  a substantial alternative argument advanced by rafts of economists'. As I said, in my rebuke to Maitlis, the BBC need  only to have looked at W Keegan in the Guardian, fer Chrissake, let alone edition after edition of Briefings for Brexit as it then was.

There is another disturbing aspect of the case: unexplained delay. Normally, the rules of the BBC complaints process stipulate completion within months...The ECU identified the imbalance only at the point of remedy. It failed to recognise that the diagnosis had already been framed in a manner which disadvantaged the Brexit case.

 Again, a classic procedure -- masterly inaction, characteristic of the whole Professional Managerial Class,usually clearly combined with eventual admissions of personal incompetence, lapses of judgement, and subsequent apology but never recognition of systematic ideology. As Lukacs said, generations ago -- the bourgeoisie literally cannot think of alternatives to their worldviews.

 

 

 

 

Rejoiner hearts leap as King of the North triumphs

Remainer hearts lifted a bit (not too much) as Burnham won a by-election for Labour, because he defeated Reform at least, and has supported Rejoin in the past, although a recent national poll suggests a large minority suspect his integrity despite his local support (most don't know, of course). The Times did its best by publishing photos of him as an effete Cambridge English graduate, years ago, looking like a member of an elite dining club, rather than his current chosen image of hardened Northern son of the soil. He is a Blairite for my money.

D Cummings, by contrast, is usually seen as the wild man of British politics, a driving role behind Brexit as among the most heinous of his crimes. He was an adviser to Boris Johnson once, but was soon deposed. He has remained as a trenchant critic of the British state and its conservatism, and he writes on Substack and elsewhere.

This piece appeared on UnHerd, which is, alas, protected by a subscription barrier. It is typical Cummings prose:

So now [politicians].... don’t want to look at [the real]... questions. Their response now is: instead of looking at all the very, very obvious big things like our totally farcical procurement system, totally farcical planning system, totally farcical energy, totally farcical housing, totally farcical MoD, totally farcical welfare, a Westminster and Whitehall that is pathological about on [sic] technology and doesn’t want to take it seriously — the answer to those problems is to rejoin the EU. 

They’re pretending that rejoining the single market is somehow a great thing, when you can barely even see the single market in the data. If you look at the Draghi report, which of course also is basically ignored in London because it’s super bad for the EU, you have a perfect example of the actual EU technocracy itself recently writing about how basically a lot of Europe is deluded on the single market.

You look at the 10 years since Brexit and it’s basically characterised by Westminster being absolutely pathologically determined not to face any of these core problems in any kind of coherent way. It’s a constant soap opera, and both sides — both sides in the sense of the kind of inside-Westminster Left and Right — have been much happier arguing about all the trans madness in 2020. 

 

I looked up the item by Draghi in the Corriere della Serra (translation by Google). It is not exactly favourable for Cummings. It does argue that important matters including conflict and technological change are now decided by powerful state systems, not market or economic forces. He has in mind the USA, China and Russia, of course. By comparison, the EU still favours a rather weak and cumbersome state apparatus based on a 'common market'. 

 

While before we relied on markets for the direction of the economy today there are large-scale industrial policies. While before there was compliance with the rules today there is the use of military force and economic power to protect national interests. While before the state saw its powers shrink, all the instruments are now employed in the name of the government of the state.

Europe is poorly equipped in a world where geo-economy, security and stability of sources of supply more than efficiency inspire international trade relations.

 [original spacing and font size  -- sorry --  and emphasis]

That market is still riddled with internal barriers:

European states are about to have a giant military enterprise with 2 trillion euros - including a quarter in Germany - of additional defence expenditures planned between now and 2031. Yet we have internal barriers that are equivalent to a tariff of 64% on machinery and 95% on metals.

Agreement with Cummings so far, but then Draghi argues for the same old option.He is certainly not in favour of national independence. What we ned is -- greater centralisation of 'Europe', especially financial centralisation, the adoption of 'common debt' ( central banking)...  

for example with an agreement on projects of common European interest and with their common funding, an essential condition for achieving the technologically necessary and economically self-sufficient dimension . ...Only forms of common debt can support large-scale European projects that insufficient fragmented national efforts would never be able to implement 

In a way this still supports Cummings,because this was the  issue before and all along.There is no soft form of 'alignment' with the EU. The old 'common market' is indeed dead. It is Europe as a superpower or nothing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

'The success stories enabled by Brexit'

 A rare subhead in the media today, a comment article in the Times by F Nelson (behind a paywall alas). Nelson is fed up with the commentaries from all sides about 'broken Britain' and points to areas of growth and optimism (for him):

 1. The start up of new AI and tech businesses, sufficient to turn King's Cross, hitherto a rundown part of London into  a 'thriving tech campus', with new money from investors from Silicon Valley. Not all are UK owned but typical founders are '[immigrant-related] Londoners who grew up in relative poverty...went to Oxbridge...flourished in a London that had become Europe's most successful melting pot'. Some companies have been spectacularly successful and are [currently] worth billions. Some have subsequently been sold to Google or Microsoft but on condition that they stayed in London. One founder gained a Noble Prize in Chemistry.

The point is that this boom owes much to 'Labour's adept use of Brexit powers' for Nelson, 'light-touch AI regulation' as opposed to EU regulations, providing a 'Goldilocks" moment for the UK, according to two Polish innovators -- 'regulation light enough to encourage innovation and assertive enough to keep people safe'

 2.New medicine, some of it from AI-discoverd drugs. 'In the EU the path [to patient trial] takes years', in Britain, months, and this has led to drug company spinoffs,one of which 'raised £1.6bn this month'. The UK has a 'fast-track system', but the EU has no equivalent.

Two general factors help further confound the sceptics, who rightly doubt the  saving graces of high tech. Border control helps manage globalisation and attract skilled immigrants [if it does], and the residual effetcs of 'British culture', the traditions of learning and intellectual effort, 'the accumulation of ideas, institutions, habits and talent that makes a country more than the sum of its GDP statistics'.

Nelson is quoting the views of one of those successful tech entrepreneurs and Nobel Prize winners here, 'Britishness as a concept, welding together native and newcomer, poor and posh', and it is unlikely to be shared widely[!]. I have many objections to this view myself, of course.

Even so, Nelson is right to say that there is something positive to say, and it would be 'ironic if Labour implodes because it doesn't know what it's doing right'.But then, the new petit bourgeoisie are conservative, suspicious of science and tech, or ambitious self-made people, and they think of British culture as genteel novels and European cuisine, so I doubt these arguments would appeal to most Remainers.

 

Make Britain great again, says a Remainer/Rejoiner

My nostalgia trip contnues with today's Graun and beloved Rafael Behr:

Without a reckoning about the epic strategic error of leaving the EU, there is no serious debate about the country’s future place in the world 

After summarising recent Great Events including military adventures in Iran, Behr urges a new role for Britain:

Britain can choose to be a partner in that project or accept a role as adjunct. National power could be boosted in an alliance of neighbours with broadly aligned global interests. Or it can be circumscribed by the Brexit cult of sovereignty that sees regulatory harmonisation with Europe as colonisation but welcomes subordination to US tech giants and industrial lobbies, which it calls free trade....British politics is not grappling with this predicament, which requires an honest audit of exorbitant costs and negligible benefits of life outside the EU... 

The electoral advantage in shutting down hard questions about Britain’s place in the world postponed the search for answers and confined it to the barren field of Brexit-believing policy options. Having failed to situate national problems in their proper global context, Labour ended up splashing around in the shallow end of political debate. That is the comfort zone of demagogues who blame the country’s ills on immigrants and benefits claimants. 

 Labour has had to reintroduce ambiguity about Rejoin, of course. Burnham is standing in a constituency that voted for Reform in reent local elections. He was a Rejoiner until last week. Back to Behr:

Farage, the ideological godfather of Brexit, doesn’t dare boast of it as an accomplishment. His model of future Britain is as a satrapy in a Maga-led US empire 

Behr thinks he can appeal to British expansionists better than Reform [I thought  British power was a fantasy only entertainde by nasty right-wingers?]

There is a reason why “take back control” was such an effective slogan in the referendum. It spoke to feelings of anxiety and lack of agency in a world of disorienting change.

Those feelings haven’t gone away. They are more severe because Britain’s capacity to influence global events was diminished, not boosted, by leaving the EU. This is the argument at its core. I suspect a lot of people are open to persuasion, if not persuaded already: the road to control leads back to Europe.

As misunderstandings go, this has got to be a good one. Taking back control was not about immigration or the democratic deficit in the EC, it was about some James Bond fantasy of Britain playing a world role again!

 

 

Remaining in the same old dead ends

I haven't read the blessed Grauniad for some while, but now Remain/Rejoin is stirring, I thought I wold to see if my favourites have moved on. Er...no

G Monbiot still nurtures his fears and loathing voters who disagree with him, this time directed at the by-election possibly going to Reform and a general crisis in British political culture (various worthies on chat shows have also pursued this line -- in Britain ungovernable etc)

Nothing sums up the death of accountability like the prospect of Nigel Farage in No 10

The general thesis weaves together the latest scandal beloved by the chattering classes -- the £5m 'personal' donation to Farage from a cryptofund billionaire (currently being investigated and mentioned on every BBC programme):

Perhaps our most poignant political folk tale is the notion of accountability. Those who hurt and undermine us will be punished, while those who help us will be rewarded. In reality, little in either business or politics could be further from the truth. A more reliable rule is that those who generate insecurity profit from it. 

The link goes to a book by N Klein, but a dogwhistle lest us prick up our ears to the anxiety provoked by cryptocurrency. Mussolini  provoked a sense of constant national crisis, Monbiot tells us, [just him?] which helped him to power, and from there it is easy:

[Farage]  was to the decision to leave the EU what Mussolini was to the decision to join the first world war. Like that other slightly rightwing figure, he promised miracles with a policy that instead delivered misery and retreat. 

The electorate is to blame. The disillusion with the two big parties arises because voters  “consistently and systematically punish incumbents for conditions beyond their control”. They also do not realise the consequences of their decisions ( Brexit),and vote for snake-oil salesmen who promise hope.

The problem is that, busy with our lives, our attention yanked from one crisis to another, we don’t have the mental space to keep receipts....[well, the petit bourgeoisie are very good at that] One result is that the more crises we face, the less accountable politics becomes.

Labour's unpopularity arises because: 

The animating force of Starmer’s team is its extreme and irrational hostility to the Labour left, a hostility it brought into government as a national programme.  

Monbiot thinks this aggressive stance has put off voters: 'There’s a basic rule in politics and in life: hate people and they will hate you back.'. But like all liberals, he doesn't see that this constant contempt also might drive people from the GUardian worldview and into Brexit and then Reform. 

Lies on the bus revisited

Readers will remember the major campaign by Remainers about the 'lies on the bus', the claim by Johnson and other members of his campaign, that the UK paid £350m a week to the EU as members. Lies because that was the gross figure that did not allow for rebates and discounts,which reduced the contribution by about a third (as I recall). Nevertheless, the furore disclosed an uncomfortable truth -- Britain was indeed a net contributor, despite the common claims that the EU had provided money for us to build various facilities, from leisure centres to motorway bridges, displayed nightly on TV news items and represented by plaques on the buildings.

Issues of contribution have reappeared. Private Eye this edition (1675 May2026) is normally resolutely Remainer, but its small mildly sceptical column  disclosed that Brexiteers claimed a net benefit of £9.4bn from not making contributions to the EU, but this was wrong (typical spin). 'The "dividend" has been steadily whittled away as successive governments realised they do, in fact, want to cherry pick'

That whittling began with the 'billions the UK has paid towards the pensions of British Eurocrats', and went on to include £2.2bn for access to Horizon Europe research and development. This Government has paid £750m to access the student exchange scheme Erasmus and E766m to France to limit small boat crossings. They are talking about access to the SAFE programme (Security Action for Europe) , but resiled from the demand for a £6bn joining fee in favour of a 'hefty contgribution' to the E90bn loan to Ukraine, and talks about the European Innovation Council Fund.

 The extra proposal for future closer alignment are estimated to cost £1bn a year. 

 

Overall, Google's AI system says that:

Between 2019 and the end of 2024, the UK paid a total of approximately £63.3 billion to the EU, which consisted of £38.3 billion in standard membership contributions (up to January 2020) and £25 billion for the Withdrawal Agreement "divorce bill" (up to December 2024) 

Public opinion on leaving

 Briefings for Britain today has a link to an article by D Frost, a lead negotiator during Brexit, on alittle-discussed issue so far in the sly campaign to Rejoin. What terms would the UK be able to get if they rejoined? We have already seen ridiculous terms to join European defence pacts/banks (£6.5bn as I recall). What would further integration involve?

Frost quotes from a recent speech from Sikorski, the Polish Foreign Minister:

To those who want to go further and rejoin (in truth, virtually the entire Cabinet), he points out what we all know: “Britain will not get the same deal that it had before.” He tells the British political class to “internalise ... the fundamental European deal that you get more benefits in return for more pooling of sovereignty”. He underlines our past opt-outs from the Schengen passport-free area and from the Euro (let us pass lightly over the fact that Poland has no such opt-out but has still not joined) and our budget rebate. “You wouldn’t get that kind of deal today,” he added 

 

Frost also clarifies the usual stuff about how rejoining the EU is now popular among UK voters. It might well be the case that they say that leaving was the wrong decision (in fact, they seem to say that leaving has done harm or damaged the economy which are different issues), but rejoining as the way forward does not follow. There is less support for that. Frost again

The other good reason is that British voters are not ready or willing to do it anyway. A poll last autumn from Queen Mary University of London showed that. Asked about 20 different policy areas relevant to EU decision-making, including some of those Sikorski mentions, clear absolute majorities of voters wanted decisions on 17 of them to be taken by the UK government only. Even among Labour voters that was true of 15 of them. That’s why Sikorski is right to say “you probably would reject the deal”.

 Frost continues:

We know the answers to these questions. The truth about the EU’s current structure – the unelected Commission accumulating discretionary power, the EU courts expanding EU powers beyond treaty limits, the fiscal rules bypassing national parliaments, the migration policy overriding democratic mandates, the rule-of-law mechanisms deployed selectively against political opponents – is that none of it has ever been properly discussed or endorsed by most European voters. Who knows whether... [voters would]... really endorse the “deal” and its consequences for their daily lives? 

I looked up the poll from Queen Mary Uni It is a YouGov opinion poll of 4534 people, with all the usual reservations, including rather small numbers in some of the cells. They mention one problem -- they did not ask directly or immediately about Brexit voting preferences for fear of a 'tribal' answer that would distort the responses. The results are still interesting:

[There has been] public dissatisfaction with Brexit since 2020 and a decline in support for Leave since 2016.... Conventional interpretions [include] that voters regret leaving the EU, there has been too much change [departure?] from EU membership, voters decided to go back to the way things were. [But there are] alternative explanations:the British public are dissatisfied with Brexit because not much has changed since leaving the EU, the Government has not made much use of new policy levers.

They asked people for preferences in 20 policy areas – should these be decided by the UK Government alone, cooperation with other governments, or with the EU. There was a majority for UK alone option among all parties (NB the numbers in some cells were very small).

Of particular policies, there was majority support for railway nationalisation (75%) , employment law (68%), refusing entry to criminals (67%), state aid for regions (66%) , immigration rules (58%), controlling the export of live animals (53%). All got majority support except AI regulation, data protection, trade rules (47%–44%). 

There was not much difference between the social classes. Even Remain voters supported the 'UK alone' option (below) in 15 answers These are, like opinions on all general policy statements, pretty ambiguous of course. How can you largely disapprove of the export of live animals yet not largely disapprove of trade rules. And we all know how trade rules and immigration policy have been connected. Maybe the percentage orders can also be taken as rank orders of importance?

 

 

 

The left behind have not declined?

I am currently working through the very detailed analysis of voting behaviour and intentions in Sobolewska and Ford (2020) Brexitland. I will post some more blogs about the book when I have time. It suggests three main political parties (in the informal sense) are at work in Britain -- identity conservatives (overwhelmingly white working class and school leavers), conviction identity liberals (white, university graduates, new petit bourgois (npb) or what they call the professional and managerial class), essential identity liberals (ethnic groups who want to defend their rights but do not support general identity politics for gays etc). The former group delivered Brexit -- but were seen as a declining force. 

So it  is easy to guess that identity liberals now find a home with the Greens, maybe some still with LibDems or Labour. The only other finding from Curtice (see previous post) is that Muslim areas saw a fall in Labour support this time, and we have seen a few Muslim independent MPs and others. Identity liberals both conviction and necessity formed the coalition at the base of New Labour and then the Lib-Con Coalition.The identity conservatives deserted Labour (and Conservative) after seeing them as all alike, in the early 2000s and just abstained in increasing numbers. 

Then the Brexit Party rallied them to the cause of Leave -- Farage wove together popular sentiments against increased immigration (not racism though, the authors insist, but ethnocentrism).  If so, why? Still opposed to immigration mostly? Or still concerned to stop Rejoin? Or still engaging in defensive class politics against the npb? Some cunning hegemonic weave of all three?

The bafflement and fear of the npb have remained unabated. I have not analysed it as closely, but you can detect the main themes being deployed against Reform as against Brexiteers. They are racist, rooted in the past, unable to modernise, illiterate, uncultured, little Englanders, irrational, unable to see the benefits of cosmopolitan, outward-looking, open, individualistc, tolerant Britain. Farage is personally repellent, ugly,corrupt. Liberals have threatened to leave the UK if Farage comes to power.

Brexit kraken awakes?

There have been several ominous signs that Remainerism was stirring again, including frequent assertions that leaving the EU had inflicted harm on te UK economy. Briefings for Britain have done their best to make their case again and again that these claims are dubious -- briefly that 

(1) the comparisons are sometimes with a packet of national economies that include the US (which is growing rapidly)

(2) comparisons with France and Germany show modest differences, even a slight positive gain for the UK

(3) major factors have affected economic growth that would have been operative inside the EU anyway -- the Crash of 2008--9, Covid, the war in Ukraine, the current crisis in Iran, the growth of China etc 

It took me a while to grasp the continued slightly muted support for K Starmer as Prime Minister among the new petit-bourgoisie in the media, but then it became clear -- Starmer is the only hope for pushing closer ties with the EU. The new petit bourgeoisie more widely are attracted by the identity politics of the Greens who are also in favour of Rejoin, but the respectable media are a bit wary of them: Starmer is their man.

In the reent local election coverage , the mass rejection of Starmer has been softbrushed a bit, although it inevitably erupted with vox pops. Media commentatros warned against chaos if the leader were replaced, and tried some amusing soothing diversions. A lot of coverage on the BBC was devoted to Welsh politics,for example, not usually considered a mainstream issue. Labour was massively rejected there but by a nationalist party, so good old nationalist identity, which the BBC has always supported, can be seen as a main cause (Plaid Cymru are also, like the Scot Nats, pro-EU and vice versa since the EU has long tolerated little cultural minorities within its union: it is just other political unions it doesn't like).

The Reform Party, which is so far outside the pale that the BBC anad C4 can hardly bring itself to mention it, gained the major success in the local polls. For non-UK readers of this blog (who seem to be frequent), Reform is a nationalist party led by Nigel Farage. Both came to power out of the Brexit Party which had such success in the European Parliament elections and then in the Referendum. 

Was Brexit a factor in the local elections? You would not expect the mainstream media to comment these days, of course, even though it seems an obvious topic to pursue given the continuity of Farage, but neither can be given publicity. However, a piece in todays Times suggests it was. Curtice, a pollster, says:

Where Leave won more than 60% of the vote in 2016, Reform won 40% on average. Where less than 40% backed Brexit, Reform's tally was just 10%. Many of the voters who backed Boris Johnson to "get Brexit done" in 2019 have now switched to NIgel Farage's party 

 

Aunty gets preachy after the Referendum

I took too long to find this. It sprang to prominence again after the case where Trump called out the BBC in a clear case of dubious editing of one of his speeches (although the BBC denied partisan intent).

I heard of individual items now and then on BBC bias but I finally tracked the whole thing. It is the excellent News Watch, a site that has been monitoring the BBC for years and applying various kinds of analyses of bias to its outputs.

Some measures of bias are pretty simple -- counting the number of time spent on reporting items, or time allocated to speakers defending particular positions (see below).

It also touches on classic themes, reminiscent of famous work in the past, like the Glasgow University Media Group (still going, and with a list of the classic stuff here) which analysed less obvious signs of preference --where spokespersons were interviewed, for example (in the studio when their opinions belonged to a cosy consensus or, literally, as outsiders in the street).

News Watch has had a number of tussles with the BBC over the years, trying to get them to take its work seriously. The BBC will not accept any 'quantitative' or 'academic' analysis of patterns, but focuses only on individual programmes and claims its staff depend on their indefinable professional judgement to decide matters like 'balance' (although the Government imposes simple constraints during elections or referenda, for example, on the number of minutes that can be devoted to spokespersons from each 'side').

News Watch says: 

Mr Hutt [ the Director of the BBC Complaints Unit], ... does not believe that academic techniques of content analysis of the type used by News-watch can be used to assess bias. It boils down to that, to him, that 9:4 imbalance was totally irrelevant because any attempt at ‘simple quantification’ of BBC content is not helpful. He argues that views about the EU/EEC are not generally ‘binary’ and that in any case, someone who might be classed as ‘pro-EU’ might actually have been making an impartial contribution.

The last one is quite a good point. But someone classed as pro-Brexit might also be capable of an impartial contribution too, of course --evidently not for the BBC. 

News Watch has pursued its complaints to Government regulating bodies and to the courts, without success. The BBC remains safe from NW's criticism, regulating itself, applying its own standards of 'due impartiality', an undefinable term, meaning, in effect, whatever BBC broadcasters define it as meaning. The BBC has advisers and regulators of course -- they are often BBC people too.

News Watch is struggling with current ideological campaigns running at the BBC, principally favouring the usual politics of climate change and gender diversity, but here, I am obliged to their earlier work on Brexit -- and embarrassed not to have summarised it before.There is a large dossier on Europe and Brexit.

Highlights include that in one radio programme in 2018:

18 of the 24 [speakers]  were pro-EU/anti-Brexit; only three were anti-EU/pro-Brexit; two contributors made points both for and against; and one was neutral.  The imbalance was startling. The 18 who made negative points on Brexit delivered 3,824 words (76 percent of words spoken by guests in this category), those speaking positively 352 words (seven per cent), and mixed/neutral speakers 838 words (17 per cent). The anti-Brexit to pro-Brexit word count ratio was thus almost 11 to one. The ratio of pro-EU to anti-EU speakers in this category was 6:1. 

A radio programme 2018 introduced a feature called a 'reality check',  a mechanism that [the BBC] say is ‘objective’checking the reality of Brexit:'. The BBC’s ‘reality check’ correspondent Chris Morris...[had earlier] ...presented a five-part series called Brexit: a Guide for the Perplexed. His lens was so distorted that 18 out his 24 main interviewees were anti-Brexit and only seven per cent of the words spoken were from the withdrawal perspective.

After a complaint was received about a radio programme in 2018 a standard BBC defence was offered: 

that the BBC was receiving complaints that its Brexit coverage was biased from both ‘sides’, those who supported Brexit and those who opposed it. Because of this, it was risibly suggested, complaints of editorial imbalance must be unfounded.... two BBC bigwigs – Gavin Allen, controller of daily news programmes, and Ric Bailey, chief political adviser – confirmed why, in their view, the BBC’s coverage was completely impartial and met Charter requirements.... Today presenter Nick Robinson – now seemingly firmly ensconced as the Corporation’s defender-in-chief – was wheeled out to defend the relentless tide of anti-Brexit negativity.

Citing another careful content analysis in 2018, Craig Byers of the website Is the BBC Biased?:

painstakingly tracked every mention on BBC programmes of the word ‘Brexit’ between Monday and Friday last week (April 16-20).

What he found was a deluge of Brexit negativity. Craig’s blog needs to be read in full to appreciate the sheer scale. It permeated every element of its news output and even percolated down to BBC1’s The One Show and EastEnders, which had a pointed reference to these ‘tough Brexit times’. In the BBC’s world, Brexit was a threat to EU immigrants (in the context of the Windrush developments), to farmers, to interest rates, to airlines, to personal privacy (via Cambridge Analytica), to house prices, to security in Northern Ireland, and more.

Perhaps the best single item is News-Watch's  summary of the BBC's output 'The Brexit Collection', its own collection of Brexit programmes (so presumably a collection that represents the BBC's unbiased policy), broadcast post-referendum, when there was all the turmoil of negotiation and threats to organise Parliamentary coups reported in this blog, and a big push for a second referendum  News-Watch.co says its analysis shows :

Brexit came under sustained negative attack... Analysis by News-watch shows that only 23% of contributors in the programmes as a whole spoke in favour of Brexit, against 58% in favour of Remain and 19% who gave a neutral or factual commentary...Nine programmes and six features, amounting to 5 hours 20 minutes of programming, were strongly anti-Brexit, contained unchallenged predictions that civil unrest and rioting were now on the horizon and cast the ‘out’ vote in negative terms, inferring that the result had been a consequence of racism and xenophobia
 

...Nine programmes and six features, amounting to 5 hours 20 minutes of programming, were strongly anti-Brexit, contained unchallenged predictions that civil unrest and rioting were now on the horizon and cast the ‘out’ vote in negative terms, inferring that the result had been a consequence of racism and xenophobia

A specific example was :

Brexit Street (occasional series PM [a BBC radio programme] , 20 July – 12 August, 2016). This was a totally flawed exercise in which an atypical street with atypical problems was depicted as representative of the Brexit vote.The series began on Radio 4’s PM programme in July, and its premise is that a regular stream of reports from this ‘ordinary street’ in Thornaby-on-Tees (between Middlesbrough and Stockton) will illuminate the underlying reasons for the referendum vote and its subsequent impact on residents and the locale. However, research by News-watch has identified it is not an ordinary street at all. House prices there are a third of the national average, and the local council has taken a very high number of asylum seekers, many of whom have been housed in ‘Brexit Street’ itself. The reporter, Emma Jane Kirby spoke of houses peppered with satellite dishes, low home ownership, high unemployment and daytime street drinkers. The focus of the early programmes has been on the problems of the asylum seekers and the apparent negative attitudes of locals towards them, including verbal and physical abuse and Swastika graffiti painted onto doors. The initial choice of interviewees has also included a high number of unemployed people who are very angry with the government that it has allowed Teesside to become rundown. To date, the interviewees have all been drawn from the DE social grades, and thus in a fundamental overall sense, the choice of material cannot at all representative of the national Brexit vote. Thus PM is being deeply misleading in its claims about the series. They have chosen a street where problems related to recent incomers are disproportionately high, and the intent seems to try show that the Brexit vote was based heavily on such tensions. Clearly, they may have been an element of voting choice, but not to this extent.

 

The analysis is focused on radio programmes which is a limitation, and there is a lack of methods to analyses specific images in TV programmes -- they need Glasgow Media Group for that. Even so, the 'serious' TV output from the BBC -- news and current affairs -- clearly falls within the scope of this analysis.

 

 

 

Long fight still on

I can't believe it has been so long! Thanks to you loyal readers who are still accessing this blog.

 

In the UK there is still a strong Remainer core in the media and in Parliament, probably given added energy by the rise of Reform in the polls and the need to pin 'lies' on Farage (Reform's leader) as well as on Boris Johnson.

 

The anti-Johnson material was given new legs by the publication of the Inquiry into the Covid emergency, which highlighted indecision (!) in Johnson's Government, but also tried to pin the issue down (so the press said) to the  refusal to believe 'the' science about lockdown and its effect in saving lives. This is really still contested of course, but not for Lady Hallett who chaired the Inquiry. She is a lawyer.

 

The Remain Holy Cause was given legs by a long rumour of a 'reset' (I mentioned it in the February blog entry) which was to let us 'cooperate' with the EU and remove barriers to English sausages entering Northern Ireland in exchange for...well, there was the problem. It seemed two stumbling blocs were the French demand for extra fishing permits, and the likely cost of contributing to some sort of European defence fund. These now seem pretty unsellable to an increasingly disillusioned electorate, and/or likely to increase support for Reform, so the Cause is hibernating again.

 

The blessed Briefings for Britain is tirelessly arguing about the flimsy evidence for economic harm caused by Brexit, despite that being pretty well taken for granted in the media. Their latest blog article is exemplary and I recommend it --here. The headline says it all:

 

There is no evidence that Brexit has damaged UK productivity growth

 

 

The Trump has sounded...

I am glad to say that Briefings for Britain is a lot more assiduous than I am in continually monitoring Remainer stuff. Remainers never give up it seems.

 Probably encourgaed by Starmer's and Labour's talk of a need to 'reset' relation with  the EU, especially over trade and defnece, and Starmer's actual attendance at an EU leaders' meeting, there has been another surge in campaigning to 'rejoin' in some form. Usually, this amounts to some form of trade agreement, rarely specified: when it has come to details, it seems to turn on the usual demands for French fishing rights in exchange for cuts in 'red tape'.

There is talk of reviving the old defence arrangements too.

Trump's eruptions have thrown everything into the air ,of course, with threats of tariffs on EU exports, and possible exemptions for the UK, and a refusal to fund European defence to anywhere near the same extent. Starmer says he will not choose between the US and the EU but he would be crazy to choose the EU if it came to it, as everyone now realizes.

It was interesting to see Trump spokespersons like Vance praising Brexit, and the egregious Sebastian Gorka also winding up the BBC by sneering at  Remoaners in a recent interview, while congratulating the independence-minded folk who voted for Brexit. Poor BBC interviewer V Derbyshire nearly choked!

Anyway, for the moment it has left Starmer replaying and updating the plot of old James Bond movies. Britain is now some valued independent third party between not Russia and the US, but the EU and the US. Despite Labour ranting about Trump for a decade and supporting the Democrats at every turn, Starmer still thinks there is a special relationship!

What of popular pressure to rejoin that we heard a lot about? Over to R Tombs of Briefing for Britain:

There was an interesting article in last week’s Sunday Times....centred on presenting a report carried out for the wealthy pro-EU lobby group Best for Britain by a company called Frontier Economics, a consultancy chaired by Dame Sharon White.  She was, readers may recall, a former senior civil servant in the Treasury (a notoriously anti-Brexit department)...

All these reports have to try to perform the ingenious trick of showing that aligning more closely with the EU would somehow make us more economically successful than its actual members.   ..

Caroline Wheeler presented the results of the poll like this:

… in every seat in Great Britain bar Clacton, the most popular option was for the UK to improve trade access with the EU even if it required the UK to follow some specific rules, standards and regulations. In Farage’s seat, Clacton, the results were extremely close, with 42 per cent opposing and 39 per cent supporting....[BUT] ...The questions asked had the effect of splitting the number who did not want realignment with the EU into two groups, those who wanted no change (19 percent), and those who actually wanted fewer links with the EU (22 percent).  The remaining 18 percent were understandably unsure.  By this simple method, the minority in favour of closer alignment (41 percent) could be presented as ‘the most popular option’.  Had the poll simply asked ‘Are you in favour of closer ties with the EU?’ the result of this sample would have been 41 percent each.

[More, an accompanying] map gives the percentages opposing or favouring realignment with the EU for every constituency in the country. [i.e. with  'realignment' and consequences for actual voting, not just an opinion poll]  It shows that only Scotland forms a block of support for closer ties with the EU, especially northern Scotland (areas held presently by the Lib Dems), parts of central Scotland (held by Labour) and to a lesser extent areas held by the SNP.  Of course, only close alignment with the EU gives any hope at all to Scottish nationalists.  Yet even in these relatively pro-EU areas, only 50-51 percent favour closer EU ties...[There are islands of support for the EU like Cambridge] yet ...In most of central England, the percentage eager for closer ties with Brussels is in the low 30s....[and]...Who could fail to notice that the proportion of people in favour of realignment with the EU today is far lower than the proportion who voted ‘Remain’ in 2016 – despite years of anti-Brexit propaganda?

 

Still a few puzzles to resolve here when the day job permits but the usual sound advice -- check the small print!

 

 

Trahison des clercs -- academics for Remain

 Well, not so much trahison really...entirely predictable if you are as cynical about academics as I am. I found them open-minded, fair,even 'objective' in their own subject areas, but naive mouthpieces of (petty) bourgeois ideology for anything outside. 

So it was for Brexit. Prof R. Tombs is the exception ('Robert Paul Tombs is a British historian of France. He is professor emeritus of French history at the University of Cambridge and a fellow of St John's College, Cambridge'). He has bravely stuck to his pro-Brexit guns, produced various articles and broadcasts, at least one book (This Sovereign Isle), and founded and contributed to Briefings for Brexit/Britain

He has a post in the lates Briefings.. summarising some of the extraordinary reactions of most British intellectuals and academics. I have noted some of them in this blog too (see Europe in the Imaginary 2017). Tombs's earlier work,including his book, takes on the view of English exceptionalism, arguing that the proportions of voters not supporting the EU in the UK was pretty constant, and was about the same as those in France, Italy, Spain, Holland and even Germany (it might be even higher now). However, '"Europhiles" seem oblivious of attitudes and developments in Europe'

[There was after the Referendum]  consternation, grief, anger, alarm....[with Brexit as ] ‘among the worst of the current worldwide horde of nationalist populisms’[according to Prof Garton Ash]...The intelligentsia, from actors to academics, participated volubly in the national quarrel.  They were overwhelmingly Remain (nearly 90 percent of academics, for example).  Over-representation in the media, especially the BBC, gave them ample opportunity to stoke controversy.

The issue was too complex for the electorate.  It was too difficult, some declared, for democracy itself: when the wrong people formed the majority it was mere ‘populism’.  Leave voters were dismissed as ignorant (‘low-information’), poor (‘left behind’), bigoted, and gullible dupes of the tabloid press, the Russians, and ‘silver-tongued demagogues such as Boris Johnson and Michael Gove’ (Garton Ash again).^[5]  Leavers were anyway old: depriving the young of their promised land, ‘driven by nostalgia’–this became a key Remainer theme—’for a world where passports were blue, faces were white and the map was coloured imperial pink’, in the words of the Liberal Democrat party leader Sir Vince Cable.^[6]  It became common to describe Brexit supporters as ‘gammon’.  Many would soon die, so their vote was invalid, and should be cancelled or re-run.  If both sides sometimes used inflammatory language, only that attacking Leave voters was biological.

This overwhelmingly hostile reaction to the vote was not based on a positive case for EU membership...they were ‘anti-Brexit’ rather than ‘pro-EU’, and had little to say about the EU itself....The many publications that have appeared since 2016—several by established academics, prominent novelists or well-known media commentators—nearly all share the assumption of English exceptionalism: that England is different from all the other ‘Europeans’.  This is the main unifying thread of what I would call ‘anti-Brexitism’....Voting Leave, they thought, must be an English psychological aberration, not a rational political choice...Fintan O’Toole, saw ‘the Brexit psychodrama’ as a product of ‘the English reactionary imagination’.^[13]  He proposed as evidence the success of the sado-masochistic novel Fifty Shades of Grey

...nostalgia became the favoured explanation of Brexit: especially nostalgia for empire and/or for the Second World War....Bernard Porter, emeritus professor of Modern History at Newcastle (for whom Brexit supporters, when not moved by ‘plain stupidity’, are fascists) takes a similar view in Britain’s Contested History.  His fundamental assertion is that Britain is uniquely obsessed with its past  

Vice-chancellors collectively spoke of their corporate interests.  Much emphasis was given to EU research funding, although the UK in fact contributed more that it received.  When historian Sir Noel Malcolm worked this out from the rather opaque official statistics, the University of Cambridge repeatedly declined to publish his findings.^[ 

Not all British intellectuals were anti-Brexit. ...The leading Left-wing political philosopher Perry Anderson wrote a series of long and excoriating attacks on the EU...He summed it up as ‘dilute sovereignty without meaningful democracy, compulsory unanimity without participant equality, cult of free markets without care of free trade.’  

...writers of fiction were certainly no better at understanding what was going on around them.  Not all admittedly were as blindly angry as the novelist Ian McEwen...A gang of angry old men … are shaping the future of the country against the inclinations of its youth....Jonathan Coe (a winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize, the Prix Médicis and the Costa Book Award) wrote Middle England, a novel in which nice people were Remainers and Brexiteers were old, bigoted and manipulated by sinister forces

There is no strong connection between the EU and anti-racism, ‘decolonization’, trans-genderism, ‘green’ radicalism, and now pro-Palestinian activism.  But this set of issues has in common with anti-Brexitism the rejection of traditional identities and sentiments....The anti-Brexit intelligentsia rejects what it thinks Brexit stands for: namely, a popular revival of the nation state, condemned as archaic, absurd, xenophobic, racist, and ‘White’.  John Gray comments that ‘the progressive mind detests national identity with passionate intensity'

 Tombs ends this well-argued piece with this:

There is a final irony.  Anti-Brexitism has become itself a form of Left-wing populism: it is, as the journalist Tom McTague puts it, ‘an easy and ultimately populist explanation for Britain’s current woes.’[45]  This reflects the failure of most intellectuals to understand the Brexit vote, or more precisely their refusal to do so.  In consequence, as the EU turns increasingly to the populist Right, as the disadvantages of EU membership become clearer, the British Isles are turning to the populist Left, in the belief that Brexit has failed. 

Do read the original piece!

 

Myths and the Enlightenment

 An excellent issue of Briefings for Britain this week with two excellent articles. The tireless C McBride discusses a series of 'myths' about Brexit, often originating in the Office for Budget Responsiblity (OBR) who seem dedicated to releasing statistics showing that Brexit has produced serious costs.

McBride had already produced a post questioning the common view, initiated by the OBR that Brexit had cost the UK economy 4% of growth. This is a very commonly repeated statement.The BBC faithfully reproduced it a few days ago, during their Election coverage, after saying that no-one is talking about Brexit during the Election They want us to blame Farage and not vote Reform, of course. They reproduced in large scale font the OBR forecast that Brexit would lead to a 4% diminution of growth (and the presenter just about added the caveat 'in the long term' in the original statement). As we all know, we are all dead in the long term.

There is a revised statement by the OBR says McBride: Brexit ‘will reduce long-run productivity by 4% relative to remaining in the EU’.As she points out this actually depends on who we compare the UK with in the EU. As this blog notes, previous comparisons have involved comparisons with the economy of the USA!   Otherwise, we are involved in the tricky business of projecting from past trends.

 Mcbride supplies a plausible (not perfect) concrete comparator -- France -- with a similar GDP: 'France remained in the EU and their GDP is [still] little different from the UK’s.' Both France and the UK have fallen behind their growth rates before the Referendum -- so something else might be better able to explain the relative decline in growth (and we have candidates ranging from Covid to the effects of the 2008 Bank crash, of course).

That post also takes on several other assumptions made in OBR predictions. One prediction in particular is the subject of a separate post.  In this one, the OBR produces scary graphs showing an apparent fall in 'trade intensity' for the UK compared to other G7 countries.

The first weasel is to make this a graph of trade intensity, not actual volumes of trade. Intensity is a technical measure of the proportion of GDP made up by trade. As McBride says:

if a country’s trade remained unchanged, its trade intensity could increase if its GDP fell and decrease if its GDP rose. In this case, Trade Intensity would be a contrary indicator of economic performance and tell you nothing about changes in a country’s trade.

Actual trade intensity not indexed shows the UK in the middle of the G7 countries.

The OBR measured not even actual trade intensity but indexed trade intensity, indexed to 2019. Then the other G7 countries are not rendered as individual lines on a graph but collected together as a curious shaded shape. McBride says this does not show volatility -- that Japan was at the bottom of the shape in 2019 and at the top in 2022

It is not clear what the OBR measured as 'trade' anyway -- just goods? Their revised graph for 2023 shows a different picture -- different measurement?

The BBC faithfully reproduced one of the more egregious sleights of hand in its discussion of the Election coverage,saying that no-one is talking about Brexit. They want us to blame Farage and not vote Reform, of course. They reproduced in large font the OBR forecast that Brexit would lead to a 4% diminution of growth (and the persenter just about added the caveat 'in the long term' while the graphic dominated in the background

The same item also sagely reminded us that Brexit was still an issue because all the plans announced by the parties for growth still depended on our relationship with the EU. This is a taken-for granted reference for the argument that trade with the EU has been damaged by Brexit?

Briefings for Britain is on that case too. The invaluable C McBride has a post denying the myth that Britain has 'walked away' from its 'largest trading partner', pointing out that we have a very favourable tariff-free trade deal with the EU: 'the only EU trade deal that does this.'. Her data shows no relative decline in exports or imports: 'UK goods exports to both EU and non-EU countries have moved in tandem...Nor have UK goods imports from the EU fallen due to Brexit.'.

There is an earlier apparent change because of definitional changes, however:

clothing and footwear must be wholly manufactured in the UK or the EU, to be counted as UK or EU goods although the materials can be imported. This caused UK exports of clothing to the EU to fall by 60% and footwear to fall by 70% after Brexit, as many of the UK’s high-street fashion brands manufacture their goods in Asia. At the same time, UK imports of clothing and footwear from the EU both dropped by about 25%....This doesn’t mean UK or EU consumers no longer purchase these items, just that they are no longer counted in UK or EU trade statistics as UK or EU exports, but are now recorded as an import from the country of their manufacture: China, Vietnam, Turkey, Bangladesh, Morocco etc. The UK clothing and footwear companies still make money from these sales and the bulk of the revenue in this business is still earned in the UK 

This misattribution of trade to the EU port where goods were landed was known as the Rotterdam effect. It massively distorts EU trade statistics

 While she is there:

UK companies that export to or import from the EU must now fill in customs forms and this will have some cost to them, but previously those costs were borne by UK and EU taxpayers. Being a member of the EU was never free....UK consumers have not only been paying for these companies’ EU trading costs for years but they were also forced to buy more expensive EU products because cheaper non-EU goods were made uncompetitive by the addition of EU tariffs or restricted completely by tiny EU tariff-free quotas.

 The reasons for an initial fall in exports were:

the Transition Period when the UK continued to trade with the EU as an EU member, so Brexit was not the cause of this fall.[well--the uncertainty produced by it might have been? Project Fear didn't help]

the Covid lockdowns of non-essential production in the UK and in many of our component suppliers. The UK’s largest goods export sector – Machinery and Transport equipment – suffered key component shortages in 2020, 2021 and 2022  due to Covid supply chain disruption....the international travel bans during Covid meant most airlines could not afford to order new planes.

 Finally:

The UK’s largest individual export market for both goods and services is the US but the UK doesn’t have a trade agreement with the US, instead, we trade on WTO terms and this seems to suit both countries.

Hope springs eternal in the Remainer soul

The UK General Election is a pretty dull affair with no criminal cases, porn stars, guns or senility. Instead we have the same old, same old --promises that no-one believes will be kept with sinister agendas lurking hidden behind the bland PR. 

Remainers/rejoiners have not given up hope even now, however, hoping that one of the sinister agendas lurks within Starmer's discussion of developing 'closer ties with Europe'.Not rejoining as such, of course. 

One Trojan horse might be proposals to allow the free movement of young people, for example. Who could possibly object to the idea that the young should be free to live, love, and above all work wherever they want in 'Europe'. We will have forgotten, surely, that this will mostly mean a one-way flow, of course, and could be the thin end of a wedge, but won't it be lovely to have bright young French, German and Spanish people serving our coffee in London again?

A Rawnsley in the Observer is one of several recently saying the whole issue must be revisited anyway:

In all this noisy election debate, why is there a conspiracy of silence about Brexit?

When the histories are written, every other failure of this Tory era will be a footnote compared with that epic folly.

Lest we forget, it is all down to the smooth-tongued liars and misleaders:

With Partygate and all the other scandals on his watch, Boris Johnson recklessly tested Britain’s tolerance for being governed by a prime minster who flagrantly debased standards in public life. With the maxi-disaster of her mini-budget, Liz Truss conducted a deranged experiment that exploded not just in her face, but blew the doors off the country....Rishi Sunak, who advocated Brexit, doesn’t want to talk about it for the obvious reason that none of the promises which accompanied that enterprise – “a new golden age” anyone? – has come true. He will also be aware that most voters have concluded it has been such a calamity for the UK that we ought never to have torn ourselves apart from the EU....Labour seeks the support of people who backed “out”, especially in working-class areas of the Midlands and northern England, and the party’s pollsters have cautioned the Labour leader that these voters really don’t want to be made to think about Brexit.

Of course there are one or two other things to discuss.I can't see quite how these are tied to Brexit for Rawnsley -- they would be solved if we were still in?:

there’s a climate crisis that is increasing in severity...decayed public services when the national finances are fragile. Although the creaking state of the NHS, schools, courts, prisons and other key elements of the public realm are supposed to be central to this election, we are not going to have a full and frank conversation about how to revive them because this would entail having an adult discourse about taxation....The voters are right to treat everyone’s claims with deep suspicion. Read my lips, no one is being candid about tax...council tax is long overdue reform. Did you know that Buckingham Palace pays less in the property tax than a family in the average three-bedroom semi in Blackpool?...a tiny group of the UK’s wealthiest estates were able to shelter nearly £2bn of assets from inheritance tax in the 2020-21 tax year. That would buy you a lot of hospital scanners, operating theatres and A&E suites.

There is also a bit of a slience about other expensive causes too, of course, not only Covid and the recession but the Ukraine war. Reckless old Boris was quite keen on that too.

Then there is the ever-lovable P Toynbee. The background is a recent noticeable swing to the 'right' in elections to the paper tiger European Parliament, which has alarmed liberals in Europe. Not Toynbee though:

Europe is lurching right on immigration. Despite Farage and Sunak’s best efforts, Britain will not follow

These [European and British] demagogues are good at their art. A snap poll anointed Farage the “winner” in last week’s TV debate on Britain’s Got Talent criteria, his booming oratory shamelessly free of factchecking. Only one sulphurous issue propels him, the same immigration fears and factoids that power the far right across Europe.

And the voters, presumably

That political elixir blends nationalism with disappointment and justified grievance, so easily blaming migrants for a lack of housing or NHS appointments, low wages, bad jobs. Those raw emotions have too often felt too visceral for conventional politicians to dare confront, leaving them mumbling awkwardly and promising the impossible. Borders do matter, determining nationhood and who shares in taxing and spending. Porous borders signal a state malfunction, as images of arrivals – mainly men – packed in perilous inflatables allow this small proportion of immigrants to be gleefully misrepresented as the bulk of big numbers here by invitation.

[Farage] and Boris Johnson, outstanding rogues of the era, are gifted performers licensed to say whatever pleases: theatricality, quick wit and a dose of sociopathy is all it takes (other EU populists share those traits).

All it takes is a calm lecture to these ignorant peasants who voted for these charlatans, and voters will soon give up their prejudiced ideas:

Instead of explaining the need for foreign workers, governments took the coward’s way and promised what they can’t and shouldn’t deliver.... Dishonesty about immigration has bred the deepest distrust of politics. Delivering an honest explanation is easier now than ever before, as public opinion has swung markedly towards understanding migration. Most people can see the need: more than 150,000 vacancies for care workers leave 1.6 million frail people left in neglect. Cafes and restaurants close for lack of chefs. Britain’s nuclear projects are short of the 138,000 workers they need by 2030. Who will fix the National Grid, water pipes and sewage outflows, let alone build Labour’s 1.5m homes, with the number of construction workers in the UK falling by 14% since 2019? Few think it reasonable to count valuable foreign students in immigration numbers, as they go home. But leaving all this unargued too often lets Faragism win the day....

[Labour] Policy to get those more than 2.5 million sick people cured and into work, as well as investing in missing skills, apprenticeships and further education, should [!] lead to more home recruitment. Raising pay and improving career paths start with a fair pay agreement for care workers. 

We shall see if a fissiparous European far right bound by anti-immigration sentiments can hold together. Back here, the sight of countries across the channel turning rightwards leaves distressed Spectator writers protesting that Britain’s left turn is “a wild anachronism”. But in Britain, it’s they who are now the left-behind dying breed. I note their language changing to describing Europe as “our continent”: do they yearn to return?

Very well, alone then! Very suitable for the 80th anniversay of D-Day. A nationalist dog-whistle, one might say.

Toynbee does quote a very good source for her views: 'Prof Rob Ford shows more than half of voters think immigration levels should stay the same or need to rise'. Her reference leads to an absurd tweet, but the actual podcast by Ford is much more subtle and complex. 

To be very brief, the issue of immigration became more of a symbolic one than a 'rational' debate about labour supply for BOTH sides during the Referendum. Taking back conrol meant an abstract issue of restoring national government rather than EC government and Brexit was enough to reassure people that control had been reasserted whatever the numbers,so the issue lost its sting. For Remainers, immigration became the symbolic issue that represented all their key values of tolerance and civility that they saw embodied in the EU and challenged by nasty Brexiteers, again irrespective of the economic case --they are still fighting this symbolic struggle. Ford also notes that 'immigration' is also entwined with racism, with Black and Asian immigrants before European ones, and that Britain is a tolerant society there, especially  among the young -- so questions about 'immigrants' might not distinguish the issues.