Tag Archives: Brexit

Before and immediately following the Brexit vote back in 2016, I said that the U.K. economy would not be harmed and that the pound would recoup all of its losses if selling were to happen.In contrast, all of the "geniuses" i.e. the economists, market pundits, hedge fund idiots and especially, the entirety of the business and financial media, said the opposite. They were all wrong. I was right.Here are some videos I made at the time."Brexit and the British pound.""British pound will recoup...

Join economist and Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 (DiEM25) co-founder Yanis Varoufakis for a keynote talk on the economic force that has shaped our world: globalisation. This South Bank talk is punctuated by images from acclaimed German photographer, Andreas Gursky, whose iconic photographs have documented global capital and its effects for three decades, and whose first major UK retrospective will open...

You would think, wouldn't you, that an "Alternative Brexit Economic Analysis" by four highly experienced and qualified economists would be a rigorous exercise in economic forecasting, supported by excellent econometrics and with care taken to avoid confirmation and selection bias?  A new paper from the Brexit-supporting thinktank Economists for Free Trade critiques the Government's recent forecast that Brexit would cause a GDP loss of between 2 and 8 percent over 15 years, with the...

Early in February, a leading Brexiteer MP (Jacob Rees-Mogg MP) delivered a Daily Express petition to No 10 calling for an end to “foreign aid madness” – an event that gathered virtually no publicity. Why should it have? Jacob Rees-Mogg knows very little, and cares less about international development. The story died. A new element was needed to inflame opposition to Britain’s foreign aid budget. Thus began the search for a six-year old OXFAM sex scandal, which fitted the framing of...

Early in February, a leading Brexiteer MP (Jacob Rees-Mogg MP) delivered a Daily Express petition to No 10 calling for an end to “foreign aid madness” – an event that gathered virtually no publicity. Why should it have? Jacob Rees-Mogg knows very little, and cares less about international development. The story died. A new element was needed to inflame opposition to Britain’s foreign aid budget. Thus began the search for a six-year old OXFAM sex scandal, which fitted the framing of ‘foreign...

Those who try to understand the Brexit vote in terms of bean counting (or cost-benefit analysis) are missing the point. Yes, there was a strong underlying economic reason for the manner in which the majority adopted Brexit. But it had nothing to do with a calculation of what the result of the referendum would do to people’s hip pocket. Voters did not behave like homo economicus. (This is where the official...

Besides the gross disrespect to those who voted in favour of Brexit (instructing them to go back to the polling stations to deliver what we think is the ‘right’ verdict), the call for a second referendum is fraught with logical incoherence. Any referendum, courtesy of being a binary Yes or No choice, must be clear on what the default is (which will obtain or hold in case the people vote No). Suppose now that,...

The main argument against my Norway Plus proposal is that such an agreement would jeopardise the capacity of the UK government to strike out into the world to bring home a variety of tailor-made trade deals with the US, China etc. At the same time, hard Brexiteers continue with their disingenuous promises of daily millions that will flow to the NHS, money saved from the UK’s contribution to the EU budget. Now,...

Britain used to have wage councils that set the minimum wage per sector. Mrs Thatcher saw to it that they were abolished, together (effectively) with trades unions and council houses – thus yielding the present Precariat-Proletariat whose palpable anger and frustration is evident across the land. There is no doubt that we need to bring back a modernised for of wage councils. Not just in the UK but across Europe!...

Courtesy of opendemocracy.net, here is the transcript of my speech of 29th January at the House of Commons. The theme? How should Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party secure a progressive Brexit consistent with a socialist agenda for the UK but also with DiEM25’s campaign to democratise Europe. The main reason I am here, I believe – I’m going to add back into Chuka’s account a few wrinkles that he omitted out of...