Fake Economic News on the BBC

“Nearly 50% of our exports go to the EU” trumpeted Kamal Ahmed on the BBC News last night.  Some mistake surely?  According to the House of commons Library, in 2016, UK exports to the EU were £236 billion or 43% of total exports.  The EU may, overall, be “our largest trading partner,” but that statement does not mean that the majority of our exports go there – the majority of our exports go to trading partners outside the EU.  Of course, figures are only figures – 43% is nearly half, particularly if you have a message to get across!  Suppose the figure was double; would 86% be translated to "nearly all" -  I dont think so.  Readers will recall that Ahmed has faced allegations in the past that he published numerous articles that “contained significant falsehood and distortion.”

Continuing to lard up his message, Ahmed also used a graph to show a comparison of GDP growth between UK and the EU from about 2007 to the present. The pattern displayed correctly showed the rate of growth diverging in favour of the EU over the last couple of years. This apparently reinforced the consistent editorial line that leaving the EU will be an economic disaster. However, had he shown a growth comparison over a more statistically significant period, the graphic would have portrayed exactly the opposite to his preferred interpretation. In fact, between 1980 and 2007, just before the crash, the average annual growth rate was 2.1% for France, 1.6% for Germany, 2.4% for the Netherlands, and 1.8% for Italy. Meantime, growth in the UK averaged 2.4%. If you extend the period to 2012, the six original signatories of the Treaty of Rome grew at only 1.6% compared to the UK at 2.0%. Finally, as the graph did show, by the end of 2013 the UK was recovering strongly from the crash whilst the EU continued to languish behind. The source for these figures is “The Trouble with Europe” by Roger Bootle. Sadly, and to the detriment of the education of their audience, these statistical inconveniences appear to have been overlooked by Ahmed and the rest of the BBC editorial staff.

In the interests of impartiality and balance, I expect the BBC to publicly acknowledge and correct the misleading impression they have given.

Leeds Festival

The date of this year's Leeds pop festival caught my eye and I made a mental note to avoid the area to and from the peace and tranquility of cricket at Headingley. It seems there is a bit of controversy over which artists should be appearing - I had not heard of any of the groups mentioned - but I did wonder whether Kendrick Lamar was any relation to the Arctic Monkeys?

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." 

 

Who Will Bring The House Down?

The Sunday papers make depressing reading with commentators queueing up to gee-up or write-off the Prime Minister. Most lay the blame for the Conservative Party's difficulties at the door of the “hard right” Brexiteers now openly being described as “swivel-eyed” by those that disagree with their principled stance on Europe. Their crime is to believe that Brexit means Brexit and that that no deal is better than a bad deal. They are fully behind the Prime Minister in the policy set out in Florence. Yet, cheered on by the BBC, they are vilified for their recklessness by the Soubry band of so-called soft Brexiteers whose unconditional admiration for everything EU clouds their sense of realism and inflates an irrational optimism of a future in Europe in all perceived trade and social advantages other than a fair share of the decision-making process. Which begs the question, which faction represents the greater threat to the Prime minister’s authority? According to the commentators, it is the ever-patient Jacob Rees-Mogg and his allies who will bring down the government. I happen to think the opposite and that it is the ever self-important Soubry and her friends in the naughty corner whose wilful divergence from Florence will, eventually, force clear thinking Conservatives into open rebellion, the unintended consequences of which could be the collapse of the fragile house of cards. They should think very carefully before nailing their colours to the anti-Brexit parliamentary bandwagon and reflect upon what they asked the British people to decide, on their behalf, in the referendum. In particular, they should look at their own government policy:

• We are going to leave the EU on 29 March 2019 
•  We are leaving both the single market and the customs union

Then they should recognise that, regardless of any so-called transition or implementation phase, you cannot achieve bullet No 1 if you fudge No 2.