According to a ComRes poll Boris Johnson will get a Commons majority at the next election only if he achieves a no-deal Brexit. A study last year by Germany’s Halle Institute estimated a no-deal Brexit would cost 12,000 jobs in the UK but 422,000 jobs in the other 27 EU members, of which 100,000 would be in Germany and 50,000 in France. A British boycott of EU cars (like South Korea’s boycott of Japanese cars) would have a devastating effect.
A no deal Brexit would give the Conservatives a seven-point lead over Labour because the Brexit Party would fade, while the Lib Dem and Labour would split the Remain vote between them. The UK economy is still looking healthy despite a fall in GDP (caused by a postponed Brexit) in the latest quarter and the British Government can weather any additional borrowing as 10 year debt costs a mere 0.487% and our credit rating is AA.
Germany, who could ease a clean Brexit and a decent free trade deal, refuses to do so. But they find themselves weakened by a declining economy, the emissions scandal in their car industry, weaker exports to China, the Trump tariff threat to their exports to the USA, the failure of its biggest bank and a big financing burden after the UK no longer pours £15bn per annum into EU coffers. And that is before the expected Italian banking crisis due to the crippling effects of the Euro. An Italian collapse would mean massive costs for the Eurozone in general and Germany in particular.
Some 43 per cent also believe that Mr Johnson is so far performing better than they had expected as Prime Minister and even the first fall in GDP for 7 years in the April to June quarter (minus 0.2% due to exceptional, one off and easily reversible circumstances) means that the UK is still heading for higher growth than Germany – where Industrial production has just collapsed (a 1.5% fall in industrial output in June following a 2% fall in April and a 0.1% rise in May). Germany will grow by at most 1% in 2019 while the UK is expected to grow by at least 1.2%.
German unemployment stands at 4.9% while in the UK it is 4.1% the lowest since 1974. Employment in the UK stands at 32.75 million – a record – and wage growth is at 3.6% the highest for 10 years.
THE UK’S SHORT LIVED FALL IN GDP
The April car factory shut downs (due to an assumption of Brexit on 29th March) meant a massive 44% fall in UK car production. Not only will this not be repeated but re-stocking will lead to much higher production in the 3rd quarter. Household expenditure rose 0.5% to June and the July PMI (Purchasing Managers Index) showed a big pick up in services (from 50 to 51.4) which is a good indicator for the rest of the year as we come out of the holiday period. As the UK Office of National Statistics said recently:
“The labour market continues to be strong, with the employment rate still at a near-record high and unemployment down again.
“Regular pay is growing at its fastest for nearly eleven years in cash terms, and its quickest for over three years after taking account of inflation.”
Our National Debt (public sector net debt excluding public sector banks) at the end of June 2019 was £1,818.1 billion – 83.1% of gross domestic product, a decrease of 1.5% over the last year.
In the three months to June 2019, the retail quantity bought increased by 0.7%. The year on-year growth rate shows that the quantity bought in June 2019 increased by 3.8%, with growth across all sectors except department stores.
GERMAN EUROPE’S WEAKNESS IN THE FACE OF BREXIT
A study last year by Germany’s Halle Institute estimated a no-deal Brexit would cost 12,000 jobs in the UK but 422,000 jobs in the other 27 EU members, of which 100,000 would be in Germany and 50,000 in France. Ireland’s central bank forecast a loss of up to 100,000 jobs in the medium term in Ireland alone, on a no-deal. (And yet Germany, France and Ireland are proving the most boneheaded in their refusal to negotiate!)
1 in 7 German cars produced are sold in the UK and 20% of its car exports go to the UK. EU industry – and in particular German and French car makers – will not only suffer a massive tax burden through the tariffs the UK could apply to their cars but they will suffer the political backlash from British consumers.
A SOUTH KOREAN LESSON FOR GERMAN EXPORTS TO THE UK
Consider what has just happened in South Korea where (in response to that country’s claims for compensation for war time crimes by Japan) Japan has removed Korea from their approved export market system. In public retaliation the fall in sales of Japanese cars in Korea has been over 30%.
The cost to the German and French economies and car industries of such a consumer boycott by UK consumers would make the above Halle Institute estimates pathetically low.
Those in the EU who treat their “Project” as purely political (we have made the opposite mistake and treated EU membership as a question of economics) are courting economic disaster – but as we see from the EU’s decimation of the Mediterranean countries, social collapse, mass migrations and millions of unemployed are all a small price for Euro-fascists in their march to imperial power.
EU goes to war with the world on financial markets:
Just as Germans and Frenchmen have expected the USA to swallow a 10% tariff on American car exports to the EU while the USA applies one quarter of that tariff to EU exports; and just as the EU was prepared in 2004 to accept free trade with East European countries so long as they surrendered their sovereignty and governance, so the EU Commission now assumes that it can bully the rest of the world into accepting its financial rules.
The Commission are preparing to remove the rights for Canada, Brazil, Singapore, Argentina and Australia because of claims the countries no longer regulate credit rating agencies as strenuously as Brussels. The Brussels-based executive can withdraw access to its financial markets with as little as 30 days’ notice. This, like so many of the regulations and protectionism of the EU is designed to extend its imperial power and make the world dance to its tune. Just as the USA risks overplaying its hand by using its world wide financial muscle (so that other countries like China and Russia set up competing payment systems) so the EU – from a position of great weakness – risks a backlash from the rest of the world. Any trade attack on the EU has of course meant and still means an attack on British trade. Only when we leave do we exist as a sovereign trading power.
If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well It were done quickly (MacBeth)
Jean-Marc Puissesseau, the Head of Port Boulogne-Calais has said of Brexit and cross Channel trade:
“People say the British are asleep but I can assure you they are highly professional and they are ready”
And in another blow to the Brexit sabotage of hysterical Remainers he said ‘nothing is going to happen the day after Brexit’ and some individuals are whipping up ‘catastrophism for their own reasons’. Indeed!
The former US trade negotiator Stephen Vaughan (involved in both the Canada/USA and Mexico/USA trade negotiations) has said that Brexit panic is totally unjustified and that Britain is very well placed with “enormous leverage” for a trade deal with the USA. Not surprising given the size of the UK economy (as the German MP Dr Alice Weidel has pointed out we are equal to 9 other EU states combined) the UK’s world wide trade, economic size and financial expertise. A delay in Brexit and therefore in concluding that trade deal would be fatal – and make us critically dependent on the bullying and restrictions of the EU.
As the chief executive of Aston Martin has rightly said:
“I’d rather leave with No Deal than drag negotiations on… Every time we have to prepare to leave it ties up working capital and brains on something that may or may not happen. First and foremost
think we now need certainty. It’s not great, but we have modelled No Deal and run the scenarios. What we find harder to work with is goalposts that keep moving every six months. We need an outcome, and the truth is that we have debated our negotiating tactics in public, while the EU27 have worked with consensus and executed their negotiations brilliantly. Our Brexit strategy has been laughable.”
Aston Martin has just opened a new plant in South Wales creating over 3,000 jobs in local businesses and the supply chain.
