BBC Loses All Sense of Balance

Like small children on an Easter egg hunt, the incontinent glee with which the BBC celebrate unearthing each hidden confection of Brexit economic gloom is tiresome in the extreme. All pretence at balance has been abandoned in favour of the BBC agenda - the extreme right wing supported decision to leave the EU must be reversed, at whatever cost to the truth.  One wonders how they circumvent their much-trumpeted internal governance processes, given the mathematics of the referendum result?  Nevertheless, the BBC's doomsayer-in-chief, Kamal Ahmed whose professional integrity has been questioned in the past, is permitted to whine on.

Those of us who voted to leave despite project fear now despair that arguments about taking back control of our laws and borders are subsumed by a barrage of economic evidence designed to send our country crawling back to Brussels at any price. Not that Mushroom's readership will make much difference to the relentless tide but it makes him, and maybe you, a little better to read something substantial to the contrary. So, we should be grateful to John Redwood, whose experience and intellect many may value above the celebrity media, for this observation on the economic pissing contest:

"The commentary  also usually wrongly assumes that membership of the single market and customs union has been wholly benign, and that if we just leave we will be worse off. The facts of our past membership do not prove this supposition. As I have often pointed out, our growth rate was faster in the years before we joined, than after we joined. There was no benefit or acceleration of growth when they “completed” the single market. 

More importantly, lop sided reductions in tariffs and barriers meant we lost a lot of industry to continental competition, but were given no parallel benefits to compete in areas where we were stronger. Our fishing industry was badly damaged by the CFP and we plunged from net exporter to net importers. Our farming industry saw its domestic market share eroded badly, aided by EU policies on beef and milk which did not help.

The EU argues that single market membership added just over 1% to our economy over the whole time we were in it – yet it is difficult to see from the actual growth figures any positive contribution. You clearly need to knock off from the figures the 5% loss of GDP compared to trend caused by membership of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism, which the EU study leaves out. You also need to take into account the £12 bn net a year contribution or cost, which is a drag of around 0.6% of GDP every year. If we spent that all at home instead that would give us a welcome boost."