Six years on

It is hard to believe that it is six long years since the British electorate narrowly voted in favour of leaving the EU. In the interim, many things have changed. The economy has most certainly taken a turn for the worse and although not all of the problems are Brexit-related, there is indisputable evidence that it has imposed significant costs. But for all the economic problems, changes to the political landscape have been even more dramatic. A referendum that was designed to lance the boil of Euroscepticism within the Tory Party and heal divisions within society has had completely the opposite effect: British society is polarised as never before and there are no signs of a healing in prospect as the UK’s reputation for good political governance sinks ever lower.

Assessing the hit to the economy

I recently dug out some analysis I conducted in 2018 based on a model simulation of Brexit costs which suggested that after eight years “real GDP will be 4.5% below the no-Brexit baseline level (falling to 4% after 15 years).” Analysis conducted two years later by the OBR came to the same conclusion. So where do we stand now? In order to provide an answer, I updated the synthetic control analysis I reported a year ago which tracks UK output in terms of  GDP outcomes in a control group of 23 similar countries to assess how the UK might otherwise have been expected to perform. Although we should not place too much emphasis on the exact magnitudes, the analysis indicates that the economy has underperformed. The results, shown in the chart below[1], suggest that as of Q1 2022 UK output was around 3.5% below the control value. Even without allowing for inflation (the figures are measured in 2019 prices) this amounts to around £1.5 billion of “lost” output per week. What was that about saving £350 million per week?

Nowhere is the hit to the economy more evident than in trade which has been impacted by the imposition of barriers to cross border flows. Brexit cheerleaders pointed to the fact that exports to the EU in April rose to a record high. They were less vocal about the fact that imports also reached a record high as the trade gap with the EU continues to widen. In any event, nominal trade flows have been boosted by the recent surge in inflation: latest data suggest that the volume of exports to the EU is still around 10% below previous highs.

However, a true picture of the UK’s economic position is only realised by looking at a comparison with other countries. Here is where it gets interesting. German data (based on my own seasonal adjustment estimates) suggest that merchandise export volumes in April were 9% below the 2019 average versus a decline of 11.7% in the UK. A similar analysis suggests that French goods exports volumes are 16% below 2019 levels. In fact, the UK’s performance relative to world trade trends (measured by the CPB’s World Trade Monitor) is not significantly worse than either France or Germany (chart above). The French and German data may be biased down by a reduction in trade with the UK. In 2014, for example, the UK was Germany’s third largest export market: by last year it had slipped to eighth. We thus need more time to assess whether the UK’s trade figures have suffered permanent Brexit damage. But it has impacted on cross-border activity, with bigger queues at border crossings and a rise in bureaucracy. And the UK has still not signed trade agreements with the US or China. There are no trade positives flowing from the decision to leave the EU.

In the domestic economy it is a different story with the latest reading, for the first quarter of 2022, showing that the volume of business investment is 9.5% below its pre-Brexit referendum levels. Whilst the extent of the decline has been exacerbated by the pandemic, even before 2020 there were signs that corporate investment activity had tailed off (chart above). This is despite the government’s introduction of a ‘super deduction’ in 2021, designed to boost capital spending until 2023. Although the latest Bank of England Decision Maker Panel, based on data through May 2022, indicates that Brexit-related uncertainty has fallen to its lowest level on record with just 1.2% of survey respondents citing it as the biggest source of business uncertainty, it should be interpreted with care. To the extent that Brexit is expected to result in a permanent 4% loss of output, the capital stock is likely to adjust accordingly. Moreover, since uncertainty reflects indecision as to whether projects should go ahead, a decision to abandon capital investment plans will be reflected in a reduction in uncertainty just as much as the decision to go ahead. Scepticism is warranted that investment will bounce back any time soon.

Can’t work, won’t work

Whatever the damage inflicted by Brexit on the economy, its impact on the political landscape has been even more profound. Much of what has happened in the last six years bears repeating as politicians continue to gaslight us as to the process which got us here. The campaign was built on lies (here or here) and it is questionable whether it ever represented the will of the people given that only 37% of eligible voters were in favour of it. The Vote Leave campaign broke funding rules which, according to one legal expert, would have invalidated a legally binding plebiscite (the referendum was merely advisory). Nor was leaving the EU Single Market ever on the ballot paper and Theresa May’s time in office was characterised by efforts to placate the Brexiteers in her party rather than find an agreement that minimised the damage to the UK.

Under Boris Johnson, things have got worse. His government prorogued parliament in 2019 in order to avoid scrutiny of his Brexit Bill and was only prevented from doing so by the courts, and in 2020 the government threatened to break international law. Johnson’s government ripped up Theresa May’s agreement with the EU and replaced it with one which placed a customs border with Ireland (north and south) in the middle of the Irish Sea, despite his promises to the contrary. He fought the 2019 election on the basis that his deal was “oven ready” – so much so, in fact, that even now the government is desperately trying to rewrite the Northern Ireland Protocol, claiming that they signed it under duress.

These are not the bitter ramblings of a disaffected Remoaner. The fallout from the referendum matters profoundly for the conduct of democratic processes. The government called a referendum which allowed voters to directly participate in a democratic decision but gave them no direct say in the terms of departure which is profoundly undemocratic. Worse still, Brexit is the Conservatives’ signature policy and it is failing to deliver on its promises. A defining feature of the current government’s approach to Brexit is persistent victimhood – only this week The Sun reported that “Britain is failing to reap the benefits of Brexit because of the defeatist mindset of ruling elites” citing a report by the Centre for Brexit Policy. Never mind that Brexit has been passed into law, that the government won an 80 seat majority at the last election on the back of its Brexit promise and that its key members were educated at some of the country’s elite institutions – it’s always somebody else’s fault.

This goes to the heart of the problem: Brexit was only ever a campaign – its existence was defined by the journey rather than arrival at the destination. Having got what it wanted, the Conservative government cannot make Brexit work because it involves trade-offs they promised we would never have to make. Partly because it is chasing shadows in trying to implement its Brexit policy, it has taken its eye off the ball on almost everything else. As Samuel Earle wrote in the New York Times, “the truth is that Conservatives gave up on governing long ago – a fact that accounts both for Britain’s current mess and Mr. Johnson’s appeal in the first place.”

There is no appetite to reopen the debates of recent years, which explains why the Labour opposition has avoided talking about the problems caused by Brexit. However it need a realistic plan if it wants to form the next government. Aside from a pledge to “make Brexit work which is, make sure we've got a better deal that works” it is far from clear what the alternatives are.

Brexit was supposed to lead the UK to a new economic nirvana. Instead, as Samuel Earle put it, “each one of [the government’s] proposed solutions, offered in the name of national renewal, has made the situation worse … An economy predicated on low productivity and low investment, buttressed by a self-defeating lack of seriousness about Britain’s condition” is now where we are. Six years ago, economists warned this would happen. What was derided as Project Fear is now reality.

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[1] It is notable that UK GDP fell by more than most countries during the initial stages of the pandemic but subsequently rebounded much more sharply. One possible explanation for this are differences across countries in the way non-market services are measured in the national accounts. Here for an explanation.

More thought, less groupthink

Assessing today’s rate hike

In light of the Fed’s 75 bps hike yesterday, the BoE had little choice but to raise rates by 25 bps today with the case for action strengthened by the fact that it now predicts inflation will reach 11% before the year is out. The markets were split 50-50 between a 25 bps and a 50 bps rise - either way they will still be at record lows in real terms - but the less aggressive option has left many dissatisfied. The hawkish camp believes that rates must rise more quickly to bear down on inflation – incremental hikes of 25 bps just do not cut the mustard. Conversely, the dovish element – admittedly a minority at present – believes that aggressive rate increases are misguided at a time when the economy is clearly slowing (the BoE predicts that Q2 GDP will contract by 0.3%).

This is a genuine conundrum and there are many question marks as to whether rate hikes are the right way to deal with inflation caused by a supply shock. Higher interest rates act on inflation by curbing demand: The magnitude of the contraction required to rebalance supply and demand in such circumstances is probably much bigger than politicians, and indeed central bankers, are prepared to accept. After all, higher rates are not going to result in more oil being pumped or an increase in Asian semiconductor supply. I was thus taken by the Tweet from the journalist Ryan Avent, who noted “I feel like there's a good chance we're reading macro papers in 20 years which are like ‘the recession of 22-3 was yet another case of Fed overreaction to energy-price shocks.’”

Moreover the linkages from the real economy to prices are highly imprecise. Given that it takes up to two years for tighter monetary policy to impact on the economy, it is likely that a host of other factors will swamp price trends in the interim. Clearly, central banks are using monetary policy to try and influence inflation expectations, particularly wages. However, this is a risky strategy. Faced with rising food and energy prices, the like of which we have not seen for 40 years, workers are not going to sit idly by whilst the prices of goods and services which they consume are going up. And when central bank actions impact on their interest costs, it is no surprise that trade unions respond with industrial action.

This is not to say that central banks should necessarily refrain from hiking rates. But it is an illustration of how the textbook models used by economists to describe the workings of the economy often fall apart when circumstances change. Just as the 1970s sounded the death knell for structural macro models which did not incorporate forward-looking expectations, it will be interesting to see whether the current vogue for forward-looking DSGE models emerges unscathed from today’s events. After all, one of the criticisms levelled at central banks is that they failed to foresee the inflationary shock.

As it happens, I have sympathy with central banks’ position. Random shocks are by their nature unexpected and although central banks did highlight that inflation would rise in the course of 2022, they could not reasonably have predicted the impact of the war in Ukraine. That said, the likes of the BoE probably should have curtailed their QE programmes once it became clear that the economy was recovering. However, even by summer 2021 they had already pumped significant amounts of liquidity into the system and the effect of calling a halt earlier than planned would have had a marginal effect on inflation at best.

The groupthink criticism

At least we cannot criticise the BoE for sitting on its hands. Rates have risen at five consecutive meetings for the first time since the MPC was established in 1997. It was not always this way: After unprecedented policy easing in the wake of the Lehman’s bankruptcy, the BoE (in common with most other central banks) kept interest rates at their 2009 emergency settings for the next nine years. This contributed to excessive asset price inflation, notably for housing, and gave rise to criticisms of groupthink as the MPC ignored all the concerns surrounding a prolonged ultra-loose monetary stance and focused purely on the near-term inflation outlook.

Former MPC member Danny Blanchflower has been one of the strongest critics of groupthink, pointing to the lack of intellectual diversity on the Committee and arguing that there are fewer independent thinkers who are drawn from an increasingly narrow talent pool. As he noted in a Tweet in May, “still nobody on the MPC lives or comes from north of the Watford gap so diversity means only London  (8) & USA (1) are represented? No Birmingham Leeds Belfast Glasgow Newcastle Cardiff Liverpool Manchester representation? No representation of business?” Blanchflower may sometimes be overly critical of the BoE but he does have a point. For example, there has never, to my knowledge, been a Scottish representative on the Committee during its 25 year existence.  Given that Scotland accounts for 8% of the UK population, one would have thought they deserve some representation. Indeed, there have been more representatives born in Argentina, Belgium, India and the United States than those born north of the border.

Assessing the evidence

To assess Blanchflower’s claim that the Committee is drawn from an overly narrow pool, it is instructive to examine the universities from which MPC members graduated. Taking their highest university degree as the relevant benchmark, 12 of the 46 past and present members obtained their highest qualification from Oxford whilst another 9 were graduates of the LSE and 7 were from Cambridge. Only thirteen universities are represented in the list, which will rise to 14 when Swati Dingra replaces Michael Saunders in August. Widening the list to include those who attended British universities as an undergraduate reveals that 16 MPC members attended Oxford (almost 35% of the total) whilst 12 have Cambridge connections (26%) and 5 have an LSE-only affiliation. The response to this is that these universities attract some of the brightest and the best. The fact that they have strict entry criteria means that those with the best academic performance are more likely to study there. But by any standards this is a small sample from which to draw and does nothing to refute Blanchflower’s suspicions of selection bias.

The old joke has it that if you ask a question of nine economists, you will get nine different opinions  and another of Blanchflower’s criticisms is that there is simply not enough dissent from the majority view on the MPC. We are on more solid ground here. I have applied two ways to measure the independence of individual voting patterns: One is the proportion of times an individual votes for an option other than the committee consensus – for example, a person who votes for a 50 bps hike rather than the majority view of 25 bps is a dissenter on this measure. Another metric is the number of times an individual votes in the opposite direction to the majority, which is a stricter measure of dissent.

Based on 25 years of MPC voting, the dissent measure, which calculates the proportion of members voting for something other than the committee average, is recorded at 14.4% over the period 1997 to 2008 versus a post-2009 figure of 6.5%. Obviously times were different in the wake of the 2008 crash when there was a universal belief that an expansive monetary policy was required. But it is notable that this dissent measure recorded a figure of 16.5% during Eddie George’s term as Governor, falling to 9.3% under Mervyn King and just 6.9% under Mark Carney. Whisper it quietly, but under Andrew Bailey’s tenure the dissent measure has crept up to 7.8%. But the numbers do back up Blanchflower’s claim that there is a lot less dissent in the voting patterns.

On the stricter measure of directional dissent, a similar pattern applies. Pre-2009, on 12.9% of occasions MPC members pushed for directional rate moves which were out of line with the committee consensus versus 5.6% post-2009. The post-2009 figure is low and would appear to confirm the fact that MPC members were reluctant to stick their head above the parapet and call for rate hikes.

Last word

For all the criticism that the BoE kept rates too low for too long in the wake of the 2008 crash – a view with which I concur – and that it has been dominated by groupthink, the events of recent months appear to have shaken the MPC out of its complacency. Although there are those who believe that it should have been more aggressive today and hiked by 50 bps, my own view is that the 25 bps increase was the right move. Doing nothing was not an option but acting too aggressively would exacerbate recession concerns, which is the last thing beleaguered households need now.

The sick man of Europe suffers a relapse

Politics gets in the way …

“When a regime has been in power too long, when it has fatally exhausted the patience of the people, and when oblivion finally beckons – I am afraid that across the world you can rely on the leaders of that regime to act solely in the interests of self-preservation, and not in the interests of the electorate.” It sounds like the sort of quote that Churchill, Thatcher or Blair might have offered up. In fact it was penned by none other than Boris Johnson in 2011 in an article in the Daily Telegraph. It is worth recalling this quote in a week when Johnson survived a motion of no-confidence amongst his own MPs by a margin of 211-148. With 41% of his own MPs voting against him, the general consensus is that Johnson’s days in office are numbered. I would not be so sure.

For one thing, Johnson’s polling share amongst MPs (58.8%) is higher than the average across the previous ten contests (54.2% - see chart above). It was a big parliamentary rebellion, to be sure, and it will make life difficult but as shows of support go this was not a bad one. Public opinion polling evidence does not suggest that his popular appeal has been damaged significantly more than most Prime Ministers at this point in their term. The long-running Ipsos poll, with data back to 1977, indicates that Johnson’s latest approval rating of 26% is slightly below the long-term average of 31% whilst the disapproval rating is at 66% versus the historical average of 60% (chart below). Past experience suggests that a disapproval rating above 70% would be a cause for concern, foreshadowing a change of government in 1979, 1997 and 2010. The latest poll reported in The Observer indicates that only 26% of respondents believe Labour leader Keir Starmer would make the best Prime Minister versus 28% for Johnson. Thus the current polling readings suggest the Tories should not be in too much of a hurry to ditch Johnson. After all, who would replace him? And would the electorate forgive the Conservatives if they ditched a third leader in six years?

It is clear that Johnson believes that he has a mandate to continue. For a politician who believes a 52-48 majority in favour of Brexit represents the will of the people, a 59-41 margin represents a thumping majority. As far as Johnson is concerned, he is not going anywhere and under current Conservative Party rules he cannot be challenged as party leader for another 12 months which would confirm him in Downing Street beyond year-end. The rules can, of course, be changed and with the Prime Minister due to face the Parliamentary Privileges Committee in the autumn over whether he lied to parliament, the position could change considerably.

… but the economy is increasingly what matters for voters

The bigger problem is that the government is likely to become increasingly distracted by internal politics rather than the mounting headwinds facing the economy. Just this week, the media focused on the news that the latest OECD forecast suggests that the UK will be the slowest growing economy in the G20 after Russia in 2023 with a GDP growth rate of zero. This is driven by a number of factors including higher interest rates, higher taxes, reduced trade in the wake of Brexit and higher food and energy prices. The government has control over some of these factors; others it has not. The concern, however, is that competing factions in the Tory government will push to implement a range of potentially contradictory policies. It is an article of faith amongst many of them that taxes should be cut. Others have picked up on mounting public concern about the poor state of public service provision, most notably the NHS where workers have been rewarded for their sacrifices during the pandemic with pay rises well below the inflation rate. It is not possible to satisfy both of these competing demands. Then there is Brexit, where there are signs of unease on the backbenches that the policy is not delivering what was promised.

But the malaise goes deeper. As a recent article in The Economist noted, the “half-hearted vote to endorse Boris Johnson as prime minister, on June 6th, betrayed how deeply Britain’s ruling party fails to confront hard choices … Britain is stuck in a 15-year rut. It likes to think of itself as a dynamic, free-market place, but its economy lags behind much of the rich world. There is plenty of speechifying about growth, and no shortage of ideas about how to turn the country round. But the mettle and strategic thinking that reform requires are absent—another instance of Tories ducking hard choices.”

There is little new economic thinking coming from the government. One of the key policies announced in the March Budget was a cut in the basic rate of income tax in 2024 – a direct nod to the Thatcherite policies of the 1980s. Last week, the government announced plans to allow benefits to be put towards mortgages and permit social tenants to buy their homes, echoing the “right to buy” policy of the 1980s. Unfortunately, those with savings of more than £16,000 will not be eligible and those with savings below the threshold will struggle to fund a mortgage.

Housing policy is certainly one area where new thinking is required. The government’s approach over the years has amounted to raising demand in the face of a slowly expanding housing supply which has served to inflate prices relative to household incomes. Unlike the 1930s the government is not in the business of building houses but it is in a position to influence policy to increase housing supply which ought to alleviate some of the cost pressures on the poorest in society in the long run. The government’s stated target is for 300,000 new homes to be built per year by the mid-2020s (some estimates put the requirement at up to 340,000). Over the last five years housing completions have averaged 163,000. The Centre for Cities argues that the lack of available land in the right places is one of the key constraints on increasing supply, which could be remedied by (inter alia) making better use of Green Belt land and reforming property taxes, notably levying a tax of 20% on the selling price of new properties to develop local infrastructure and allow funding for more social housing. Whether or not these are the right policies, they are an improvement on efforts to stoke demand.

There are a host of other areas where reform is required and space considerations preclude a detailed look. However, in order to improve the economic circumstances of voters requires reform of areas such as NHS funding and the social care system. Efforts to reduce regional imbalances which could help to boost productivity, long the Achilles Heel of the UK economy, are also necessary which may require changes to regional governance. Reforms to the tax and benefits system are very clearly needed – Universal Credit is a good idea in principle but its implementation has been badly handled, as the National Audit Office pointed out in 2018 – whilst the Mirrlees Review noted more than a decade ago that “the tax and benefit system should have a coherent structure based on clearly defined economic principles.”

There are many other areas besides. But the main takeaway, as the article in The Economist made clear, is that the government has failed to take bold steps in recent years to tackle many of the underlying economic problems. It continues to rely too heavily on policies which were deemed successful in the past but which may not be appropriate today. Unfortunately since Johnson’s government will spend the next couple of years merely trying to survive and is unlikely to engage in much long-term strategic thinking, most of the UK’s economic ills will continue to fester. In the 1970s, Britain was known as “the sick man of Europe.” It appears to have relapsed.