Letters & opinions
letters@prospect-magazine.co.uk
Brexit economics
You feature opposing opinions in December’s issue but your cover headline “Brexit Britain’s trade delusion” and the editor’s use of a metaphor of the UK as a “patient” indicates your preferred option.
Nevertheless, both Robert Tombs and Paul Ormerod provide positive assessments on Brexit to the negative supply shock theory advanced by Adam Posen, an American economist with seemingly more influence on the British than the US economy. If European Union members have a favourable trade surplus with the UK (selling more to us than we to them) why would they jeopardise their own economies rather than seeking a mutually beneficial deal? It appears perverse in the extreme.
Tombs draws attention to the dysfunctionality of the eurozone: youth unemployment, migration, the Catalan crisis, the rise of extremist parties. He could add Greece, Spain, Portugal, Cyprus, Ireland economically and Germany politically.
In the words of John Ralston Saul, “if economists were doctors they would today be mired in malpractice suits.”