Short-term Brexit disruption is a price worth paying—Britain can thrive on the outside

Brexit offers us the opportunity to compete in a world which is rapidly evolving

by Paul Ormerod / February 9, 2018 / Leave a comment

Chief EU Negotiator Michel Barnier. Photo: Ye Pingfan/Xinhua News Agency/PA Images

A great deal of the economic commentary about Brexit remains focused on the immediate future. But the key economic question relates to the longer term. How well will Britain’s economy adapt to rapid changes and the innovations of the future?

There are of course influential people who do not like to see capitalism being innovative, in ways that can be hard to control. It is this comfort blanket view of the world which surely lies behind MIFID II, the latest regulatory fest from the European Commission, which started to come into force at the beginning of this year.

The Markets in Financial Instruments Directive II is designed to offer greater protection to investors. At least seven years in the making, it already runs to several thousand pages of regulatory requirements. In this mind set, bureaucracy and rules can eliminate risk.

But it is so complicated that it is virtually beyond the powers of a human to grasp. Certainly, experts like Phil Treleaven at UCL who have shone the light of AI on it believe that it is riddled with contradictions.

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A transition has been agreed but the road to an orderly exit is still strewn with...

Comments

S C.
February 10, 2018 at 11:56
An interesting but very broad brush view. Nonetheless, it touches on an important point, that rational planning and prediction is sometimes - even often - pointless. I voted 'remain', because of the law of unintended consequences: it was completely unknown, in June 2016, what leaving the EU would entail, and what the practical opportunities would be outside the EU. Nothing that has happened since has altered my original view. One minor but important point: Brexit believers now criticise remainers because the economic disaster predicted by Osborne et al hasn't happened. No, because (a) we haven't left the EU yet and (b) the economy is driven by many things, not all of which government understands or can influence. Perhaps we can revisit the point in a couple of years' time?
R_HITCHMAN
February 10, 2018 at 18:33
The congnitive dissonance is on the part of the Leavers. Services are the strong point of our exports, and by far the biggest component of GDP, but we are to leave the Single Market. The forecasts, signed off by Dexeu, show that any arrangement outside the EU is economically worse. This is civil servants lying. And so on. I despair.
M W L.
February 14, 2018 at 09:55
Really a very thin and simplistic article.