Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Josquius]

On the flags business....
The inevitable happens as a 'colourful' and 'well known' football hooligan falls off a lamppost.

https://www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/bristol-news/well-known-bristol-football-fan-10699651

I think I might do something I never expected and vote Green in the local elections. Though at the same time I've never felt more ick about a Green leader.

It comes and goes with me. Sometimes I hear him and I'm definitely like "Yes, this is what we need, exactly", other times....I can sense an uncanny valley. Clearly a politician and playing that game but trying to sound real and coming across.....other.

As I say though I support him for his impact on others. I'm already on board with the left-green worldview.

[Richard Hakluyt]

It seems that he was a painter and decorator by trade; which is close, but with the name Paul Lumber he really should have trained to be a plumber.

Re his accident; I'm surprised that a painter and decorator was the first to have a fatal accident, as they often work on ladders anyway. Anyway, RIP Mr Lumber, I'm sorry that you lost your life for such a silly thing.

[Valmy]

I think this is an example, which I've mentioned to Raz before, of a lot of "identity politics" not being driven by the left but by the centre left.

Yeah. This is an easy way to appear progressive even if you actually have center-right politics in other respects. And better it rarely requires you to actually pass any laws.

[Sheilbh]

In fairness I wouldn't describe her as centre-right, she's solidly soft left and as I say in other ways quite an interesting MP. It's partly why I'm disappointed. But also just such a pathetic argument.

Few things that caught my eye recently.

I saw that the old Talking Politics team got together to talk British and European politics again so obviously I listened (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-the-uk-became-ungovernable/id1802535276?i=1000740284861). It's worth a listen - I like David Runciman and Helen Thompson a lot. But I was taken aback at just how coruscating they are of Starmer and Reeves - it makes me feel like my view has perhaps been too generous to them. Particularly struck that in my query of whether Starmer is very naive or just a very cynical liar, they clearly think the latter - also the description Runciman has of Starmer personally (presumably from senior people) is brutal.

Also saw some stuff on Reform - someone leaked their training for candidates in London for the council elections. What was really striking was that an awful lot of it would basically be not a million miles from the Lib Dem strategy for local elections. It's another sign of them professionalising/actually trying to build a party. Although interesting story that their canvassing etc strategy is quite different/distinctive. Also leaking today is Labour's membership numbers which is done to beloe 250,000 - that makes Reform the biggest party in the country on over 260,000 (Greens on about 180,000, Tories on about 125,000 and Lib Dems on 85,000).

Separately from Ben Ansell who's a political scientist at Oxford a really fascinating (if difficult to read) chart:


Broadly it is breaking down each party's vote (with party colours) by education - this is then mapped onto cultural and economic questions like the classic political quadrant thing.

So what's interesting is that the educational divide on Britain's left is "vertical". It's cultural. Lower education groups are more socially conservative than their fellow voters with higher education. That's true for Labour, Lib Dem and Green voters - interestingly it's also true for the "don't knows".

By contrast the educational divide on the right is economic. There is some verticality/a slight slope. But the bigger divide is that lower education voters are more left-wing, while higher education voters are more right-wing.

I'm not fully sure what this means or might mean - but it's really interesting. The obvious thing is that it probably helps explain "how painful is it to talk about this issue". The right are happier talking about culture war stuff because they broadly agree on it; Labour's happy place is talking about the NHS and tax/spend because they broadly agree on it.

I also think it sort of goes to one of the reasons I think Badenoch is actually doing okay - and is a vastly better option for the Tories than Jenrick. Because there's not much variation with Reform voters (or Tory voters) on "cultural" issues - but there is on economics. It probably also makes sense for Labour to heighten Reform's economic tensions (although this would require Labour to work out what it's own message is... )

[Admiral Yi]

I think this is an example, which I've mentioned to Raz before, of a lot of "identity politics" not being driven by the left but by the centre left.

Please elaborate.

[Valmy]

I think this is an example, which I've mentioned to Raz before, of a lot of "identity politics" not being driven by the left but by the centre left.

Please elaborate.

How often does Bernie Sanders mention being a jew? Usually it is the centrist Democrats who are like "The first XXX to be XXX! Look at our progress!" I used to joke that if they were around in the 1850s they would be celebrating the first trans plantation owner without actually doing anything to end slavery.

[Sheilbh]

Yeah on Sanders the line that always sticks out for me was Clinton's: "if we broke up the big banks tomorrow — and I will if they deserve it, if they pose a systemic risk, I will — would that end racism?" I think she did the same through LGBT+, sexism, immigration etc.

As I say Olufemi Taiwo's Elite Capture is a very good book on this - and it's about 100 pages so readable in an afternoon.

On the representation point there's a particularly weird and I think very tone-deaf side to that with Reeves. In part I think because Labour absolutely hates the fact that it's on its second leader called Keir while the Tories are on their fourth woman leader (three of whom have been PM) and second ethnic minority leader. Plus the Tories had various "firsts" in the last government: first British Asian Chancellor and Home Secretary, first Muslim Home Secretary, first Black Home Secretary and Foreign Secretary etc.

Because of this Labour or at least Reeves seem to make a weirdly big deal of Reeves being the first woman Chancellor (and also because it's the last "great office of state" not held by a woman). So in her big pre-budget interview with The Times she had a line about how "I'm sick of people mansplaining how to be chancellor to me". There's been a couple of moments where she's suggested she's treated differently than Gordon Brown or George Osborne would be. There was a line in the FT about this from a profile of her:

"At a genteel "meet and greet" over sandwiches and tea with local business leaders, the chancellor is robustly challenged — she believes rudely — over her punitive taxes on North Sea drilling. Suddenly the mood changes. "Talk to me with respect," Reeves says, glaring at her interlocutor. Eyes shift nervously towards the floor. "I'm the chancellor of the exchequer."

There are no cameras to record the extraordinary exchange. Is everything all right? Surprisingly, Reeves seems to have enjoyed the moment. "He wouldn't have spoken like that to George Osborne or Gordon Brown," says Britain's first female holder of the 800-year-old office, referring to two of her predecessors. "He deserved it," she guffaws, heading out to the waiting car. Reeves demands respect — and she believes that with her Budget, in spite of everything, she will earn it."

This was part of Badenoch's response to Reeves, which I think was fairly effective on this point: "Madam Deputy Speaker, let me explain to the Chancellor. Woman to woman. People out there aren't complaining because she's female. They're complaining because she is utterly incompetent." And I think there is something to that. She came in and there was lots of "Iron Chancellor" stuff. The jokes about her and "lack of respect" have developed because she's bad at the job - and I have lots of issues with Brown and Osborne but they absolutely stamped their authority over the Treasury. There was always a clear sense of what they were trying to do. I also think demanding "respect" is not something that goes well for any politician in Britain.

But to the GD Politics podcast I think there is a weird tone-deafness to Starmer and Reeves on this sort of stuff. David Runciman says that Starmer apparently has repeatedly told his cabinet that without him and his team none of them would be in a job because they wouldn't have won the election (which I think vastly overstates his role v the collapse of the Tories). But there's another story of an away day when apparently Starmer told the cabinet they were the most working class cabinet in British history - apparently Shabana Mahmood pushed backon that by asking, even if it's true is it how they're seen? His metric seems to be that none of them went to private school - but I think "most working class" is challenging.

It is the point Runciman and Thompson made on the podcast that Starmer's entire career in politics has shown a breathtaking disinterest in the truth, but also there's been a fair bit of dishonesty by Reeves both about her own career (plus plagiarism in a book she wrote) and how she frames budget decisions. Which might be fine if they were clearly cynical Machiavels - like Lord Mandelson - but appparently Starmer in particular is very, very vain and quite sanctimonious with people. And I think the combination of very obviously cynical and dishonest, with sanctimony, demands for respect  and incompetence is perhaps uniquely toxic.

[Josquius]

That is a funny one on we hate you cos you're shit not because you're a woman.
Related.

https://www.reddit.com/r/BlowsToRachelReeves

[Jacob]

That's really fucking unfortunate for Britain

[Admiral Yi]

Yeah on Sanders the line that always sticks out for me was Clinton's: "if we broke up the big banks tomorrow — and I will if they deserve it, if they pose a systemic risk, I will — would that end racism?" I think she did the same through LGBT+, sexism, immigration etc.

Thinking about this I can see what you're talking about. The Democrats are a coalition of professional women and blacks.   The mainstream of the party is going to push for women and blacks. Whereas your Bernies and your AOCs are going to push more economic freedom fighting. Which is not to say the progressives  are devoid of identity politics.

[Tamas]

Yeah on Sanders the line that always sticks out for me was Clinton's: "if we broke up the big banks tomorrow — and I will if they deserve it, if they pose a systemic risk, I will — would that end racism?" I think she did the same through LGBT+, sexism, immigration etc.

Thinking about this I can see what you're talking about. The Democrats are a coalition of professional women and blacks.  The mainstream of the party is going to push for women and blacks. Whereas your Bernies and your AOCs are going to push more economic freedom fighting. Which is not to say the progressives  are devoid of identity politics.

As a side note: if you think that opinion above is logical and impartial, it is not.

[Admiral Yi]

As a side note: if you think that opinion above is logical and impartial, it is not.

Feel free to make your case.

[Sheilbh]

That's really fucking unfortunate for Britain

So as I contribute more than my fair share of doom and gloom about Britain I should also post this useful corrective from Chris Giles in the FT - as in part there is an elemnt of a "vibescession" about it.

The UK economy is not nearly as bad as you've been told
A huge pessimistic bias in our national accounts leads us to doom and gloom which turns out to be nonsense
    Chris Giles

PublishedDec 12 2025

When asked what they think about the economy, the British public can sometimes be horribly blunt. In a YouGov survey after November's Budget, three in four people thought the government was managing the economy badly. Chancellor Rachel Reeves' statement landed badly with four in five business leaders surveyed by the Institute of Directors. And Ipsos Mori reported that the proportion of people who thought that she was doing a good job was lower than that of those who still approved of Kwasi Kwarteng after the disastrous "mini" Budget of September 2022. These views will be compounded by Friday's economic data showing the UK economy contracted for the second consecutive month in October.

I have no doubt that these feelings are honestly expressed. But is it really true that the UK economy is unhealthy, as 79 per cent of the public think? Or that it will be in a worse state in a year's time, as nearly two-thirds believe? Might this pessimism in fact become a self-fulfilling prophecy — leading to the nation no longer being able to rely on the British consumer's desire to shop?

Normally, I would dismiss such theories, but some compelling new Bank of England data has made me change my mind. In a revealing new spreadsheet, officials have compiled a series of all their previous forecasts since 2007, making it easy to gauge their accuracy.

If we go back roughly three years to November 2022, media headlines resulting from BoE forecasts screamed that the central bank was predicting the UK's longest ever recession, even if the Financial Times had a more sober take (the BoE was signalling that interest rates would not rise as far or fast as markets expected).

Since the BoE forecast horizon is three years, we can now examine how accurate the prediction of a prolonged slump was: the real size of the UK economy is 7.4 per cent larger than forecast. If we are gloomy now, just imagine how bad we would feel if families with two children had annual incomes just over £13,000 lower on average. That is what the bank was expecting.

I am not asking you to be grateful for the small mercy that the economy did not suffer its longest recession ever. But it is instructive to examine why things have turned out better than predicted and whether that should have any relevance for our mood today. The UK is close to record-high employment, for example, but the prevailing public impression is that unemployment and welfare claims are as bad as the 1980s and there is no growth at all.

The first reason that the forecasts proved spectacularly wrong was that in November 2022, the BoE thought the size of the UK economy would fall by 1.8 per cent over the following three years. It has, in fact, grown 2.8 per cent. The underlying difference has nothing to do with poor modelling, but simply that wholesale gas prices did not remain exorbitant. Instead, they fell sharply, raising UK growth and living standards.

The second reason for GDP being 7.4 per cent higher than expected is that the Office for National Statistics has revised up the real level of UK economic output both for 2022 as well as for the years since. Sadly, this is far from a one-off for our national statistical agency.

Since 2007, the first version of official economic history — the version that gets reported as news every few months — showed that the average annual growth rate was 0.76 per cent. By contrast, the current version of the same history says average annual growth was 1.34 per cent, 76 per cent better.

The main periods of measurement error came in the austerity years of 2012 to 2014, in 2017 during the early period after the Brexit referendum and in recent post-pandemic years. The truth is that a huge pessimistic bias in our national accounts has led us to be fed with contemporary reports of doom and gloom, which subsequently turn out to be nonsense.

But it is the first version of economic events that enters the national debate — and the national consciousness — for the entirely understandable reason that initial releases of economic data make news. You cannot expect people to care deeply about a revision to data that is three years old. Psychologically, they have made up their mind by then.

We are still told that 2010s austerity destroyed growth, but the data no longer supports that story: growth between David Cameron's election victories of 2010 and 2015 now registers an annualised average of 2 per cent. The contemporary story was that we were entering a "triple-dip recession".

It does not stop there. We thought that the UK missed out on the 2017 US boom, but that also turns out not to be true. And after Covid-19, instead of a recessionary economy, the growth overseen by chancellors Jeremy Hunt and Reeves has been pretty average rather than something to bemoan.

These revisions to GDP also mean that three times during this decade so far, we have fallen into a panic about national debt because the ONS reported that public sector net debt exceeded the size of the economy. Each time, in late 2020, in May 2023 and in September 2024, those figures turned out to be wrong. The latest ONS estimate is that public debt is 94.5 per cent of GDP.

As economists, if we wonder why people are saving rather than spending, we have tended to point to high interest rates or scars from the recent inflation episode. We should also consider the narrative we tell ourselves. A desire to save no longer seems so surprising when the government, opposition parties, official statistics and the media all report that the British economy is in terrible shape.

Let's be clear. Our economy is not booming. But it is much healthier than feared. So, if you are asked how well the UK economy is doing, remember that it is considerably stronger than the mood music would lead you to believe.

Slight detour but there is a slowly unfolding but really serious crisis in our official statistics. There's been a few big corrections recently, but also some really core economic data like unemployment where they've had to pull a release or delay it. From what I've read a really big problem is that official statistics rely a lot on survey data (which I was not aware of) - willingness to participate in those surveys has been declining for a few years but it's absolutely collapsed since covid. Which means they're either not able to collect the data they need or there's a big gap between the initial release and subsequent data (from actual sources like tax collection etc).

Similarly whether you look at the economy since the crash, since the Brexit referendum, since covid, since Ukraine - on basically all of those the UK economy has performed at about the same rate as most other big European economies. Broadly about the same as France, little bit better than Germany and basically more or less the same as the Eurozone as a whole. I think there can be a bit of negative exceptionalism when Britain's politics and economics basically looks like most of the rest of the Europe. There are differences but I think they distract from the underlying similarity - and I think there are similar structural challenges across it all.