Launching Labour’s campaign to boost manufacturing after Brexit, he is expected to say: “Our exporters should be able to take proper advantage of the one benefit to them that Brexit has already brought, a more competitive pound.
“After the EU referendum result, the pound became more competitive and that should have helped our exporters. But they are being sold out by a lack of a Conservative government industrial plan, which has left our economy far too reliant on imports.”
‘… which has left our economy far too reliant on imports.”
Does he mean the UK should instead be taking advantage of the low Pound and be buying more of its exports?
Search me. The brilliant plan hatched by such brilliant people as …ooo lets say Tim Worstall was to do an incredibly stupid thing thereby causing the pound to drop like a stone
This was a “good thing” because exports were now cheaper leaving us with plenty of fun thinking up more stupid things we could do that are actually ‘good things’.Burning down London maybe, a general strike re introducing the black death , its all good.
Sadly before we could really get out teeth into this brilliant plan as propounded by the brilliant Tim Worstall and his Brexit brains trust , exports refused to budge
Oh dear could it because most of exports are enmeshed in supply chains and sticky on Price …maybe , or maybe we are not being stupid enough
Never fear NO DEAL is here which is not quite what was promised …
Burning down London maybe
I’m not seeing a downside here. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Newmania
Have you considered Psychiatric assistance and have you ever posted here under another name? DBCReed or Arnald?
Newmaniac: I am on the wrong end of the falling pound, and still support Brexit. Your contributions remind me why.
VP – I suspect he is Arnald. His Brexit butthurt almost makes me wish I had a time machine so I could go back to 2016 and vote LEAVE five more times.
Newmanic – falls into the trap of thinking brexit was solely about economics and nothing else because he/she/it has no argument against the real reason – the loss of sovereignty and our inability to decide our own destiny. This failure to understand the nature of the population that you live in is why remoaners can’t understand why the vote result was for brexit.
Newmania
UK exports have risen.
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-exports-at-record-high
For a proponent of the view that remainers are more intelligent than leavers you appear remarkably ill-informed on pretty much everything upon which you opine.
While some ignorant people like the Business Secretary (and you) have swallowed the idea that the UK must remain in the EU because of supply chains, most intelligent people are aware that global supply chains go in and out of the EU with no issues – why it’s like supply chain management might perhaps have conquered the problems caused by customs and other lead times.
There are a variety of issues associated with WTO trade and no deal, but they are not of the trivial supply chain lead time sort, they are more about issues associated with local content rules etc. However, if the UK leaves and does not remain in the Customs union, these problems are likely to arise anyway.
At his age, Corbyn must have seen industrial plan after industrial plan fail. Why does he think he suddenly has the answers, given that his answers are no different from the old answers?
Learning from experience isn’t his strong suit.
Meanwhile unplanned economies like Switzerland seem to manage to export very easily!
@Chester Draws
But, they weren’t the right industrial plan. If only they had chosen the right plan, all would have been well. It’s a bit like it’s never real socialism when it goes off the rails.
We make and grow (and develop, particularly services) some stuff for domestic consumption domestically. Some domestic production/services created is/are exported. What we can’t make (cheaply) or grow ourselves we import (including some services). If Chinese potato peelers are cheaper or better, what’s not to like? Is it really that difficult to understand?
“What does this even mean?”
A siege economy and import controls.
What does this even mean?
The constituency he’s appealing to doesn’t care if it means anything because for them it means “he’s the boy”. Which palpably doesn’t mean anything either.
The Eye Spy MP twitter feed posted a pic of Corbyn moving a pallett yesterday evening under which a wag commented that he was supporting freedom for palletstine. Rather good, I thought.
Are you back as Newwanker then Facepainter or are you T iT ?
Is T it your subconscious mind struggling with the guilt of selling out your nation and your people? Or is he one of your inbred relatives from Brussels?
The public would deserve to know if they gave a shit.
Best go help your scummy mates with the laugh riot that is “Project Fear : Y2K 2.O: The End of The World”.
“Have you considered Psychiatric assistance and have you ever posted here under another name? DBCReed or Arnald?”
Arnald May have been wrong on just about every subject he posted but h did have a sense of humour and could even be self deprecating. I almost miss him.
@ Newmania
One of the problems of trolling Tim W is that some of the guys and gals reading his blog actually use their brains to think – I was going to say unlike some Guardian writers but I observe that no comments are permitted on the latest article so obviously *someone* in the Grauniad realises that the great Corbyn would be mocked.
As ken points out exports have risen significantly since the £ exchange fell and the effect will become more marked as time wears on since there is a time lag between the placing of an order and delivery, so anything which takes three or four years to manufacture won’t be delivered this year. Of course this is only obvious to people living in the real world.
I seem to remember that my history books told me that a major result of the Black Death was to massively increase real wages of the working class, at the expense of employers, and the intention of the General Strike was to maintain the uneconomic level of coalminers’ wages that had more than doubled (in real terms) during WWI. These are obviously the sort the sort of thing that Jezza would love, but our Tim is keener on increasing income for everybody not just for a small (or even a large) lobby group at the expense of everyone else.
Did anyone notice the UK trade surplus in February 2018
https://tradingeconomics.com/united-kingdom/balance-of-trade
First time that’s happened this century.
This is not good news, a bit of a blip due to China’s new year no doubt, GFCF has turned down slightly, and the currency is weaker, but it might help Newmania toss himself off to a peaceful sleep some time this week.
What I like about Tim’s place is that lefties like me can have sensible discussions with righties and we learn to temper our ideals by learning about and observing reality.
@ jgh
That’s why I used to subscribe to “The Economist” in my 20s when it was an intelligent left-of-centre weekly; when someone woke up to economic reality and it switched to right-of-centre I gave up.