Macroeconomics: UK economy, IB Economics

Polly Toynbee on Brexit five years on. She's not a fan. 

Eighteen days to go.

Expect more of the same. According to the think-tank, New Financial, some 275 firms have moved some business and £900bn worth of assets. Good news!

We are definitely taking back control. Of a smaller economy, it would seem.

Just the usual Larry Elliott excellence, synthesizing a century's economic history into an article. It can be summarised thus: we've never really got over losing our economic pre-eminence by the end of World War I, and similarly, we've never really tackled the structural weaknesses of the economy since then. 

The key sentence: "For decades Britain imported more than it has exported, finance is too strong and manufacturing too weak, there has been a ready supply of new ideas but a failure to develop their commercial potential, and businesses have struggled to get long-term funding and workers with the appropriate skills levels".

Larry Elliott with another take on the Huawei incident - within a historic context. In the article he wonders how a country that was once a manufacturing powerhouse has been reduced to being reliant upon China for telecoms technology. 

He argues that we were naïve in assuming that China would be content to be a low-cost manufacturing hub and that the free market was always best served with minimal intervention. He contrasts China's state-controlled capitalism with the shambolic attempts to manage industrial policy in the UK. As a result, in becoming an economy dominated by finance, we've lost comparative advantage in a number of sectors. And, I guess, that then suggests another question - what happens when we lose our advantage in finance? 

Not scooped much about the City and Brexit recently, but Barry Eichengreen serves to remind us of the cost to the UK, if large parts of the City up sticks and leave for Europe.

Heaven help us.