Excellent piece by Camilla Cavendish in the FT, on the government’s plans to clamp down on the right to protest:
For those without a subscription, the key paragraph is this:
The public order bill going through parliament would enable the state to electronically tag people who have not been convicted of any crime, and to prevent an individual from attending a protest simply because they have been to one in the past. The bill will expand police power to stop and search people “without suspicion”, and let the Home Secretary apply for injunctions in relation to any protests she dislikes, a provision that would surely interfere with the operational independence of the police.
Carney has defended that statement recently. I’m sure there’s some devil in the detail but his core message is the same. Brexit has damaged the UK economy and is partly behind the interest rate hikes we are seeing. He predicted this in 2016.
In the U.K., unfortunately, we’ve also had in the near term the impact of Brexit, which has slowed the pace at which the economy can grow
“This is what we said was going to happen, which is that the exchange rate would go down, it would stay down, that would add to inflationary pressure,” Carney added. “The economy’s capacity would go down for a period of time because of Brexit, that would add to inflationary pressure, and we would have a situation, which is the situation we have today, where the Bank of England has to raise interest rates despite the fact the economy is going into recession.”
Basically, Brexit caused a reduction in value of the pound, which directly increased the cost of imports. If you then combine that with a decline in production and exports it goes bad pretty quick. Worth noting that the devaluation in the pound is a long term devaluation. It will fluctuate but the mean value will remain lower (I don’t know how long). Also the levels of production and exports also remains lower.
Portes and Henig are both remainers at heart. They have written extensively about how Brexit will negatively impact the British economy. The issue here is Carney’s way of measuring it is not the recognised way of doing so. He is letting his personal beliefts interfere with the argument - which is what happened when he was at the Bank of England and made it more difficult to make the case for remain.
Sure, no problem but I don’t think Carney is wrong either. It’s subtle but what he’s arguing is that it’s caused a permanent devaluation in the pound Vs Euro which creates a natural increase import prices. This in turn creates inflationary pressure. Porte etc. are correct that it’s not a good measure to compare economies but a knock that is a long term one is.
We are slowly becoming like North Korea!
No matter what bill they put out, people will still come out and protest even more, with the cost of living and cost of energy crisis, with interest rates and inflation at an all time high. General public are really angry with this government.
