Stuart Coster

FYI, the GfK measure of UK consumer confidence rose two points in May, but the devil is in the detail 👇 Lower and middle income households reported steep falls, presumably because they are more likely to lose their jobs and less likely to have savings to tide them over...

Scrutiny is never tedious. Brexiteers claim that leaving the 🇪🇺 can’t have been that damaging as 🇬🇧 growth post 2020 has tracked 🇫🇷🇩🇪. But thing the Online Right is correct about is there is not one graph in this country that isn’t reflecting the Boriswave — which artificially juiced GDP by adding population. This post-Brexit wave is gigantic: roughly 4m people or 6% of the population. If we look at 🇬🇧 per capita GDP growth compared to 🇫🇷🇩🇪🇳🇱🇳🇱 below the Brexit damage is even more clear. From 1999 to 2015 we see 🇬🇧 GDP per capita growing roughly in line with 🇳🇱 with their services-led economy, much faster than 🇮🇹 and 🇫🇷. Post-Brexit this historical higher growth rate in GDP per capita is wiped out. Just look below at the second set of columns which excludes the Covid years. We see 🇬🇧 falling behind 🇳🇱🇫🇷 and shockingly for some even 🇮🇹. Only compared to 🇩🇪 suffering from the China manufacturing shock and the Russia energy shock does UK growth per capita look good. What we’ve seen in this exchange is Tory Brexiteers, unlike Restore or Reform, are not comfortable in making an argument that Brexit is about identity and migration and worth any price. They have to deny the scale of the economic damage.

Coming back at this now I’ve had a bit more time because Brexit scrutiny matters. What we are seeing here is three things. 1️⃣ With the dismissing mention of the “Rotterdam effect” we see an attempt to deny 🇳🇱 is a highly successful and more trade intensive economy than the 🇬🇧 with similar profile in tech, finance and services. This is the home of amazing companies like ASML, which makes advanced chips possible, Adyen, the $57 billion fin tech standout, the banking giant ING, or the outstanding NXP semiconductors. This is truly an economy look at for inspiration. Thanks to these incredible companies you can remove the entire Rotterdam and effect and still the 🇳🇱 economy is more trade intensive than the 🇬🇧 one. 🇳🇱 export earnings, which measure value accruing to their economy not passing through it at 35% of GDP compared to 27% for 🇬🇧. But it is crucial to the Brexit case to believe such an economy is impossible inside the 🇪🇺 — which is what we’re seeing here. 2️⃣ We are seeing an attempt to claim 🇬🇧 with a similar economic profile to the 🇳🇱 would not have tracked more closely with the 🇳🇱 than with 🇫🇷 or 🇩🇪. The graphic below shows this is demonstrably untrue. The 🇬🇧 actually grew faster than the 🇳🇱 1999-2015 but this lead has vanished since Brexit. The graphic also shows the 🇬🇧 traditionally has grown faster than 🇫🇷, 🇩🇪 and 🇮🇹 economies but our lead has either reduced, stagnated and only reversed in the case of 🇩🇪 suffering the very specific China and Russia shocks to its much larger manufacturing economy. 3️⃣ What we’ve seen in these Brexit arguments over the last few days is an attempt to deny recent 🇬🇧 economic history. We’ve not actually been in permanent stagnation: growth in 2014 was first in the G7 and in 2015 was second and on a positive trajectory. This was thrown off course by Brexit, due to losing access to the Single Market, and 🇳🇱 is a decent comparator of a similar though of course not identical economy that has flourished thanks to the Single Market. But not only. Brexit has failed to meaningfully open new markets compared to 🇪🇺. Not only are GDP gains over the long term new deals with 🇮🇳, 🇦🇺 and GCC deals minuscule — 🇪🇺 has now agreed deals with 🇦🇺 and 🇮🇳. 🇪🇺 of course already has deals with all the CPTPP countries that matter. This means the only new access we have is the new GCC deal adding 0.11% of GDP by 2036. Bottom line 🇳🇱 has basically all the accesses have plus the whole 🇪🇺 and is doing better than us —but when we had access to 🇪🇺 like them we were overall growing faster than them.

🚨 BREAKING: Rachel Reeves will announce "Great British Summer Savings" tomorrow She will outline plans to cut import taxes on over 100 food items, including biscuits, chocolate, fruit and nuts

Breaking: Keir Starmer confirms that fuel duty will be frozen for the rest of the year. The 5p a litre rise that was coming in September has been scraped amid concerns about the cost of living

Pro-EU Labour figures very disappointed by this as they had thought Burnham was running to prove a Rejoin candidate could win in Makerfield and Brexit could be reversed. “Shambles,” says one

BREAKING Andy Burnham says he will 'respect' the result of the EU referendum. He says he is not proposing that Britain should rejoin the EU. It's a shift from his position at the weekend, when he said there was was a 'long-term case' for rejoining the EU. Burnham is trying to kill Brexit as an issue during the by-election 'I am not proposing that the UK considers rejoining the EU. I respect the decision that was made at the referendum. It's going to undermine everything I've said about strengthening democracy if we don't respect that vote. 'I sense a real yearning out there. People feel why aren't we where we should be? Why aren't things just working as they should? 'That's what I think has to be our focus now. Fixing the fundamentals of our own country rather than plunging into another divisive debate about a relationship with other countries'