REFERENDUM DEBATE CONTRIBUTION

As an avowed Brexiteer who doesn`t wish to go door to door enthusing his neighbours the piece below from Civitas today might be of interest.

 

 

Press Release
Embargo: Immediate

Tel: 020 7799 6677

www.civitas.org.uk

Predictions that can't be proved correct one way or the other versus demonstrated facts available to all

The Remain camp has succeeded in making economic predictions about the economy the most important 'factual' battleground. This has allowed them to distract attention from the factual record of the Single Market. It also enables them to base their appeal for votes on the authority of the predictors rather than on the demonstrated evidence that is available to every citizen. The last thing they want is voters making up their minds after assessing the objective facts. A new commentary by the analyst Michael Burrage provides the latest objective facts concerning the growth of exports to the EU of 40 economies since the inception of the Single Market in 1993 up until 2015. It is a abundantly clear that the UK's compound annual growth rate of 3.44 per cent over the period is woeful compared with that of a large number of countries who are not even members of the Single Market. Burrage writes: "The economic argument for remaining in the EU pivots on the supposed benefits to members of the Single Market. It is because the UK must keep access to this market that it must put up with all the other costs, obligations and inconveniences of membership. And since non-members only have access to this market, while accepting many of these costs, obligations and inconveniences, non-membership is not thought to be a sensible option. "Curiously, none of those who use this argument, including David Cameron, ever refer to the published and readily accessible record, showing the impact of membership on UK trade or exports. The Prime Minister prefers to cite highly speculative forecasts of what might happen in 10 or 15 years time, as if what has happened over the past 23 years is not important. "Christine Lagarde, managing director of the IMF, might have directed him to the comprehensive database of her organization, but she preferred to tell him, and the British people of her ‘hunch’ that the consequences of Brexit would all be negative. "Shortly before her UK visit, the IMF Direction of Trade Statistics database was updated with the figures from 2015. They are used in the Table (visit the CIvitas website for a larger view of the table) which shows the growth in the value of the exports of goods to the EU since the formal inauguration of the Single Market in 1993 to 2015 of forty countries, all of which have been exporting to the EU under WTO rules, which according to Messrs Cameron and Osborne is ‘the worst possible post-Brexit option’. "They have not played any part in setting EU rules, have not concluded any trade agreements with the EU, and have not paid a penny for access to the Single Market. The UK meanwhile has been enjoying all the benefits of membership." Notes Michael Burrage is the author of Myth and Paradox of the Single Market and The Eurosceptic's Handbook, both published by Civitas in 2016. He is a director of Cimigo, which is based in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, and conducts market and corporate strategy research in China, India and 12 countries in the Asia Pacific region. He was a Fulbright scholar at the University of Pennsylvania, has been a lecturer at the London School of Economics and at the Institute of United States Studies, specialising in the comparative analysis of industrial enterprise and professional institutions. He has been a research fellow at Harvard, at the Swedish Collegium of Advanced Study, Uppsala, at the Free University of Berlin, and at the Center for Higher Education Studies and the Institute of Government of the University of California, Berkeley. He has also been British Council lecturer at the University of Pernambuco, Recife, Brazil, and on several occasions a visiting professor in Japan, at the universities of Kyoto, Hokkaido and Kansai and at Hosei University in Tokyo. For more information, contact Michael Burrage on 020 7101 2011 or Daniel Bentley on 020 7799 6677.