More Sunday musings… on Brexit.

A few weeks ago I watched a short video of Dr Adam Posen talking about Brexit. If you haven’t seen it and want to, here’s the link. Posen is an American economist, President of the Peterson Institute for International Economics and spent 3 years on the Monetary Policy Committe of the Bank of England.

Posen sets up what he sees as the economic risks of Brexit – throwing up barriers to trade with our biggest partner by far (over twice as big as the US), the risk to the City of London as a financial centre, the ending of the role of the UK as an entry point to the EU for non EU member economies and the problems of not being in the Single Market as opposed to a customs union.

He asks, rhetorically, what might be perceived as weaknesses in the EU economy versus the UK economy to warrant our decision to leave – on an economic basis? He cites over-regulation, an excessive welfare state, demographic decline and the problems with the Euro.

Posen argues most of these things don’t apply to the UK. We have the least regulated labour market in the EU, the smallest welfare state and the demographic issue was being alleviated by economic migrants from eastern Europe. And, of course, the UK was not a member of the Single Currency.

In short: if the UK was to stay in the EU, none of that would change.

By his analysis, we’re removing perceived over-regulation in other areas versus everything else that were never material issues in the first place. ‘There is no economic upside,’ according to Posen.

Is it worth our ‘sovereignty’, then? It seems to me there is a nuance to European integration lost on some who think, actually, it is.

Ireland isn’t going to unify any time soon. Neither are Czechia and Slovakia, nor Flanders and the Netherlands. They might in 50 years, if attitudes have changed. The point of the Good Friday Agreement and the European Union more broadly is they don’t have to unify. And if you can walk across a border – to work, to meet friends or to go shopping – the urgency of unification and separatism fades. But more and more, people are being forced to choose which side to be on.