EC Meeting Papers January 2018

up with any solutions for tackling the reasons people voted for Brexit in the first place: low wages, job insecurity, the feeling that they were not being listened to. Remainers have latched on to any piece of negative economic news – no matter how trivial – in the hope that this will lead to change of heart among leave voters. But they have struggled to sketch out a plan for dealing with Britain’s structural economic problems, which were there before 23 June 2016 and will still be there whether or not the referendum result is overturned.

UK companies will face huge new VAT burden after Brexit

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Constantly accentuating the negative without coming up with any solutions to Britain’s chronic balance of payments deficit, its north-south divide and its reliance on debt-fuelled growth has helped create the impression that some remainers would welcome a stiff recession because it would bring voters to their senses.

Remainers do themselves no favours when they over-hype the bad economic news. They may be better off pointing out that the part of the global economy that most outperformed expectations in 2017 was the eurozone and that Mario Draghi has done a brilliant job as president of the European Central Bank in disguising the single currency’s innate flaws. The UK economy will do better than expected in 2018. That it will do better partly as a result of a stronger eurozone is one of life’s ironies.