Category Archives: Brexit

Can you name any famous Nigels? No, me neither. Except for.... yep, you got it. The only Nigel I can genuinely name off the top of my head (though I will admit to singing XTCs classic 1979 classic while I write this piece, Making Plans For Nigel: Were only making plans for Nigel /We only want whats best for him / Were only making plans for Nigel / Nigel just needs that helping hand) is... Nigel Farage.

Research released this week by the Office for National Statistics has revealed the most (and least) popular baby names in England and Wales, and the name Nigel has officially been deemed extinct. The data showed that not a single baby was named either Nigel or Carol in the whole of 2020 sad times. Or is it?

Lets look at some reasons why this might be the case starting with my original challenge: if you cant name any Nigels, other than the obvious, then hes likely the figure that immediately comes to mind. Were all in the same boat; including brand new parents. If Nigel was on their shortlist, then theyll likely be thinking about what that Nigel is most famous for: Brexit, of course. As the former leader of the Brexit Party (and before that Ukip), Nigel Farage was a fiercely outspoken foghorn for leaving the EU. And who wants to name their new baby after such an obvious disaster?

So what has Brexit brought us today? Not much good, when you consider that the current food shortages were experiencing have been branded permanent, with shoppers warned we will never again enjoy a full choice of items; and the recent fuel crisis kept us all queuing and irate, with Brexit deemed a factor, according to Grant Shapps.

Firms are facing a post-Brexit, post-Covid recruitment crisis across the board; there is significant unemployment in some areas of the country and Christmas might well be cancelled. Is it any wonder that new parents arent exactly rushing to name their babies after one of the most divisive architects of Brexit?

After all, research shows that your name can have a long-lasting impact on your personality. David Zhu, a professor of management and entrepreneurship at Arizona State University, who researches the psychology of names, told the BBC that because a name is used to identify and communicate with an individual on a daily basis, it serves as the very basis of ones self-conception, especially in relation to others.

US psychologist Jean Twenge found in the 2000s that people who didnt like their own name tended to have poorer psychological adjustment; and one study even suggested that the name youre given as a child might affect how people perceive the shape of your face. A German study in 2011, included in the BBC report, found that people with names considered unfashionable at the time (such as Kevin) were more likely to be rejected, and another piece of German research discovered bystanders were less likely to help out a stranger with a negatively rated name.

With all of this in mind (as well as the image of the man of the pub failed MP and former MEP/Ukip/Reform UK leader), now imagine calling your precious, cute newborn baby.... Nigel.

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In Australia, the name Nigel is so deeply unpopular that its used as shorthand for someone without any friends; a colloquial term for someone who is considered a social misfit. Apparently, it comes from the fact that the name was unusual in the 1970s and begins with n, as does the term no-mates. Eyes on that.

Of course, names wax and wane in popularity; and we should all take these trends with a pinch of salt. Just as we were apparently calling our kids after Game of Thrones characters in 2019 with 560 of more than 4,500 babies who were named after the hit show called Khaleesi, and 163 named Daenerys (according to the United States Social Security Administration), well probably keep seeing the data skew towards whatever is popular and unpopular at the time the data was collected. It can, and does change regularly, unless youre called Oliver and Olivia (the names have just topped the list for the fifth year in a row).

Just as his namesakes have all but disappeared, Farage has also threatened to leave the country, telling his LBC morning breakfast show listeners that if Brexit is a disaster, hell go and live abroad. Make those plans, Nigel, make them! Theres no if about it the way things are right now, wed barely notice the difference.

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The name Nigel is now extinct yet another thing we can probably blame on Brexit - The Independent

But pro-Brexit campaigner Jayne Adye has warned the Government must take a bold approach rather than plodding along in accordance with the blocs status quo. Ms Adye, director of Get Britain Out, was speaking at a time during which the nitty-gritty of Britains ongoing relationship with the bloc is increasingly under the microscope.

The controversial Northern Ireland Protocol, under which the region effectively remains a part of the EUs single market, is at the forefront of the debate - but Brexit Minister Lord David Frost has made it clear he increasingly wants Britain to move away from alignment with EU red tape - particularly in the area of vat-added tax (VAT), which applies to a wide range of goods and services.

Ms Adye said: The Government has already accepted cutting VAT is a good idea for encouraging investment in industry and consumer spending.

Just last year, to encourage people to go out and spend money, the Government temporarily cut VAT in the hospitality sector from 20 percent down to five percent.

Nevertheless, despite the success of the scheme in delivering a timely boost to the economy during the pandemic, the Government still insisted such reductions were temporary measures.

Ms Adye added: Ever since the 2016 EU Referendum and before then, Get Britain Out and other pro-Brexit campaigns have produced report after report identifying areas of EU regulation from which the UK should free itself.

However, despite this plethora of information and experience at their disposal, those in Whitehall have shown no interest in actually implementing meaningful change.

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How is such a complicated system sustainable?"

Ms Adye acknowledged Chancellor Rishi Sunaks probably motive in resisting calls to scrap VAT was to refill the Treasurys coffers after the pandemic".

However, at a time when interests rates are at record lows, the focus should be on lowering the cost of living and helping the country reach optimum growth as the nation made its way in the wider world, in line with Mr Johnsons Global Britain vision, she suggested.

Ms Adye said: In the tax year 2019-2020 (the most recent year available) the UK had a VAT Gap of 12.8billion (the difference between the actual amount of VAT collected and the theoretical tax liability), equating to 8.4 percent of potential VAT revenue.

Is this really a hole in our budget which is not worth working to eliminate?

Instead of choosing to simplify our tax system, we continue to plod along, happy to stay aligned to what became the norm under EU regulations.

Too often the Government has ignored chances to break away from the EUs status quo.

She asked: Is this just about not wanting to rock the boat or just being too lazy to make changes and come up with our own ideas?

The tax system in the United Kingdom needs to be reformed, and the Government should either abolish VAT, or bring in VAT reform if we are to get the best from Brexit.

An HMT spokeswoman told Express.co.uk: Since we left the EU, weve taken advantage of our new freedoms to reform VAT including zero rating womens sanitary products and collecting more VAT from large online retailers. We keep all taxes under review.

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Now ditch VAT! Boris urged to supercharge Brexit Britain by axing hated EU tax rules - Daily Express

A poll run by the Mail on Sunday was discovered buried at the bottom of a page after the results went the wrong way.

After the UK was blighted by empty shelves and queues at petrol stations, early signs of buyers remorse could be seen in polling in the typically Brexit-backing newspaper.

It showed that, if there was a vote to leave the EU tomorrow, only 36 per cent would vote out compared to 52 per cent in 2016.

Conversely, 45 per cent would vote in giving REMAIN a clear 9 point victory.

Last week, aSavanta ComRes poll forThe Independent showed most Brits dont think their personal finances will be better as a result of Brexit.

The survey found no region, social class or age group thinks Brexit will benefit them financially with only 22 per cent of the total amount of Leave voters thinking they will have personal gains from exiting the EU.

And over a third of voters said they think their personal finances will suffer because of Brexit.

Findings suggest voters think Boris Johnson should prioritise levelling up, but only 28 per cent believe he is honest in claiming to work towards achieving equality among UKs different areas.

The strongest scepticism came from the North and the Midlands areas the prime minister vowed to help.

The survey also found that more than 56 per cent of voters think their lives will be worse because of rising costs of food, energy and housing and many are also worried about Brexit and recent Tory changes to tax rates.

Fears over living costs were strongest among the elderly, with 73 per cent of over 65s concerned about their finances.

Around 43 per cent of the poll responses revealed Brits worry their financial situation will worsen over the coming year.

Related: New research reveals: Labour is better at handling the economy than the Conservatives

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Daily Mail buries poll showing voters have turned against Brexit - The London Economic

When Nigel Upson checks the plucked chicken carcasses dangling from a rotating line at his poultry plant in England, he sees cash hemorraging out of his business from a collision of events that has distressed every part of the farm-to-fork supply chain.

Like food manufacturers across Britain, Upson was hit this year by an exodus of eastern European workers who, deterred by Brexit paperwork, left en masse when COVID-19 restrictions lifted, compounding his already soaring cost of feed and fuel.

Such is the scale of the hit, he cut output by 10% and hiked wages by 11%, a rise that was immediately matched or bettered by neighbouring employers in the northeast of England.

Increases in the cost of food will surely follow.

We're being hit from all sides. It is, to use the phrase, a perfect storm. Something will have to give.

"We're being hit from all sides," Upson told Reuters in front of four vast, spotless sheds that house 33,000 chickens apiece. "It is, to use the phrase, a perfect storm. Something will have to give."

The deepening problems at Upson's Soanes Poultry plant in east Yorkshire are a microcosm of the pressures building on businesses across the world's fifth largest economy as they emerge from COVID to confront the post-Brexit trade barriers erected with Europe.

In the broader food sector, operators have increased wages by as much as 30% in some cases just to retain staff, likely forcing an end to an economic model that led supermarkets such as Tesco to offer some of the lowest prices in Europe.

Following the departure of European workers who often did the jobs that British workers didn't want, retailers may have to import more.

While all major economies have been hit by supply chain problems and a labor shortage after the pandemic, Britain's tough new immigration rules have made it harder to recover, businesses say.

Richard Griffiths, head of the British Poultry Council, says that with Europeans making up about 60% of the sector, the industry has lost more than 15% of its staff.

The Bank of England is weighing up how much of a recent jump in inflation will prove long-lasting, requiring it to push up interest rates from their all-time low.

Upson told Reuters that he needs 138 workers for his plant, but has had to operate with under 100 staff members due to high turnover.

On difficult days Soanes can only deliver the absolute basics - chickens piled into boxes. They do not have time to truss the birds for retail or put them into separate, Soanes-labelled packaging that commands a higher selling price.

Around 3 tonnes of offal that is normally sold each week is going in the skip due to the lack of staff to process it.

The sudden rise in wages and the drop in output also come on top of spikes in the cost of animal feed, energy and fuel, carbon dioxide, cardboard and plastic packaging.

"We've just had to say to our customers, sorry, the price is going up," Upson said, shaking his head. "We're losing money, big style." The poorest consumers would be hardest hit, he said.

Business owners have urged the government to temporarily ease visa rules while they do the staff training and automation of processes needed to help close Britain's 20-year, 20% productivity gap with the United States, Germany and France.

But far from changing course, Prime Minister Boris Johnson says businesses need to cut their addiction to cheap foreign labor now, invest in technology and offer well-paid jobs to some of the 1.5 million unemployed people in Britain.

The National Farmers' Union said in a recent report that parts of the UK's food and drink supply chain were "precariously close to market failure", limiting the ability to invest in automation.

While 5,500 foreign poultry workers will be allowed to work in Britain before Christmas, and the UK will offer emergency visas to 800 foreign butchers to avoid a mass pig cull sparked by a shortage in abattoirs, the industry says it needs more.

As for automation, the production of whole birds is already highly mechanised, and while it could be used more for boneless meat and convenience cuts, the cost is prohibitive for a small operator.

The National Farmers' Union and other food bodies said in a recent report that parts of the UK's food and drink supply chain were "precariously close to market failure", limiting the ability to invest in automation.

Read the full story here.

($1 = 0.7277 pounds)

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Brexit and COVID 19 prove toxic combination for UK poultry sector - The Poultry Site

James Martin is forthright on most topics. From Brexit to butter, weight loss and overwork, moany Britons and his beloved Yorkshire. But theres one thing he wont be drawn on and thats how many cars he has. He chuckles a few times but wont give a number.

Maybe he regrets tellingGQmagazine in 2019 that he owned 41 cars including an 800,000 vintage Ferrari. And thats without counting his bikes. But he will admit, when we speak, that he is in an electric car, an Audi RS e-tron GT. Elon Musk doesnt need any money from me, he jokes, though it is possible that he cant be seen behind the wheel of a Tesla since he wrote a controversial column about using one to scare cyclists in 2009.

But thats ancient history. Martin, now 49, tempers this flash exterior with an approachable manner and rolling banter. He has earned the shiny toys, working his way up from pot washer at Castle Howard, where his family farmed on the estate, to the finest French kitchens.

His chat has been perfected during his years of live television, presentingSaturday Kitchenon the BBC for a decade until 2016 alongside many other series. He also owns a number of restaurants one in a Manchester casino, another in swanky New Forest spa Chewton Glen, and a chain of James Martin Kitchens.

He presents ITVsJames Martins Saturday Morningand has put his name to at least 27 books. His latest,Butter, was already on its second reprint the week before publication, and he recently announced that he is joining the relaunch of SpudULike, the jacket potato chain which had 37 outlets when it collapsed in 2019 before it was rescued by potato empire Albert Bartlett.

But isnt the great British public too overcome with health anxiety after the past 18 months to go for a book about butter? People dont want to be lectured at, told what to eat or told to go on a bloody diet in January, Martin says. He turned down his publishers request for another book on home cooking. I said, really? Everyones been stuck in the house for two years.

He has spoken before about weight gain and loss and a family history of heart disease. Is a book about butter his way of sticking two fingers up at killjoy health police? He has always eaten butter and cream and all fats, he explains. Illness has affected his family due to drinking and, for some, smoking. Hes lost three stone (19kg) recently because hes been working seven days a week; there have been no fat-free diets or gym visits. He hardly drinks because he is too busy working, but would never cut out any food.

Martin considered doing a book on fat, but butter is such a big topic in itself that he decided to focus on it. Ive spent my entire career using butter without compromise and without substitute, mainly because there isnt one, he writes in the introduction toButter. The taste depends solely on where the cream comes from, which in turn depends on the breed of cow as well as the pasture it feeds on the whole process is a simple but complexone.

France has always been seen as the homeland of great butter; look out for chir, Lescure and Beurre dIsigny. But Martin points out that the British butter industry, as with cheese, has vastly improved and small producers such as Ampersand, Briddlesford, Fen Farm and the Edinburgh Butter Co are leading the charge.

If you need any more convincing, hes roped in some chef friends to sing butters praises.

There are times when butter can make miracles happen, says Jos Pizarro, the Spanish chef who has just opened his fourth restaurant, at the Royal Academy of Arts in London.

Paul Ainsworth likens it to salt. It can simply transform food from the ordinary to the sublime.

How about margarine? Horseshit, says Martin. Two elements away from plastic. I dont want to eat anything thats made in a test tube. I want proper food.

Hes found that his demonstrations on how to make butter are popular because people often admit to not really knowing what butter is churned cream. The solids leave behind buttermilk which is rarely specified in British recipes, but it has a rich and tangy taste and is common in Irish and US baking. Soda bread is an easy way to use it up. InButter, Martin suggests buttermilk pancakes, panna cotta and crispy buttermilk chicken.

He gives recipes for 16 varieties of butter itself and the sweet section really delivers: brown butter cake with bourbon butter glaze, butter cake with butter sauce, cinnamon bread with caramel butter dip, toffee apple brioche butter pudding and miso butter fudge.

What if food shortages are holding us back in the kitchen? Dont blame bloody Brexit, get off your arse, says Martin. Its not Brexit, its the perfect storm of everything.

Its about the way we, as Brits, think of food. Weve become reliant on convenience. We expect carrots to be washed for us and strawberries on the shelves in November. When its not all there, we kick off.

Is he pro-Brexit? Oh no. Were Europeans and Im in hospitality. But we cant turn the clock back. Youve got to get on with it.

Butter: Comforting, delicious, versatile is out now (22, Quadrille), with photographs by John Carey

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James Martin on choosing butter over dieting, and why food shortages aren't only down to Brexit - iNews

DJ equipment is in short supply. Consumers are reporting soaring prices and a lack of availability of controllers, turntables, monitors, and other products. Thousands of DJ equipment suppliers throughout the UK are experiencing shortages for two major reasons: the UKs departure from the EU, and the pandemic. Each has caused catastrophic ripples throughout British supply chains, with shortages only raising the costs of remaining gear and its looking like it may remain this way for the foreseeable future.

A recent report by DJ Tech Tools revealed that hundreds of products are currently in low supply or out of stock entirely, while prices soar on leftover gear due to higher labour costs. There are a lot of reasons why labour prices are increasing - an ongoing pandemic, a labour shortage, local lockdowns, and many more. As labour costs go up, those increases can also feed back into component costs, explained the new study.

DJ Tech Tools also pinned the cause of price increase and slower shipping times on overbooked ocean and air freight while many ports are currently congested, meaning products may arrive months late. Events absolutely are not back at 100% of what they were pre-pandemic, and that has meant more careful purchasing by companies throughout the industry, they reported, adding that Pioneer equipment prices have increased by around 2-4% in recent months.

Read this next: DJ equipment is in "short supply" as prices skyrocket

Steve Lee, Managing Director of Synthetic Pro Audio - a Nottingham-based Pioneer and Denon DJ store - told Mixmag about the challenges hes faced in recent months: Worldwide component shortages, shipping delays and shipping prices have all played a role in stock shortages. Now, Brexit is taking a toll on the already existing issue, adding more VAT and import duties along with extra lead time due to customs, he said.

At the start of the pandemic, we witnessed a major rise in sales which quickly left most products out of stock. The phone was ringing off the hook, and the email inbox was jammed as we waited for factories to reopen and ship products, he told Mixmag. Then at the turn of the year, a factory in Japan that manufactures the semiconductor chips supposedly burnt down, which is one of the only factories in the world to make them. So, as you can imagine, this is something the brands that we sell can do absolutely nothing about.

According to several reports, a three-day fire broke out in the semiconductor factory that creates chips for both Pioneer and Denon equipment on October 20 of last year. Many of your favourite consumer audio brands such as Denon, Marantz, Anthem, Onkyo and Monoprice use AKM DAC's in their AV receivers and processors. These aren't parts that can easily be swapped out for an alternative without a PWB level hardware change, reported AV magazine Audioholics.

Read this next: Pioneer DJ reports rise in the sale of entry-level DJ controllers during lockdownBrendon Stead, VP of Product Development at Sound United reassured the magazine that they had stored enough parts to see them through the winter, and reminded Audioholics of Japans 2011 earthquake which caused similar devastation to equipment manufacturing, but bounced back very quickly. We believe that level of resiliency is shared among our friends and colleagues at AKM and we look forward to them being operational in the future, he said.

Meanwhile, Brexit has significantly affected shipping through the UK in recent months, now requiring manufacturers to traverse paperwork, VAT increases, import duties, and longer shipping times. Brexit has been tough on everybody in this industry, and will always play a part in the future, said Lee. Our larger brands arent based in the UK - courier services during the beginning couldnt keep up with the calls and invoicing which had people like myself on the phone for hours on hours while still waiting on invoices for the import duties.

Read this next: Denon ups the stakes in the DJ equipment battle with its new players

James Kane, an associate working on trade policy at the Institute For Government, says that its not quite as black and white as Brexit-based tariff laws, but argued that so far as this is to do with tariffs, this issue will be permanent, noting how this could become a long-term issue for trade after Brexit. Before Brexit, the UK was part of the European Unions Customs Union, which is where two or more countries share a common tariff as opposed to two individual tariffs. Without a common tariff, you can be liable to pay them on imports and goods wherever theyre from in the world, he says.

Kane, who experts in UK tariffs and trade policy, also explains: the other thing thats driving up the prices of equipment at the moment is that even when a tariff is due, theres still a lot more paperwork to fill out. This creates new costs where you now have to hire customs agents, it creates delays at the customs border, and therefore drives up the prices of equipment once its imported.

Although Synthetic Pro Audios Steve Lee praises the industrys ability to pull through such events and continue working at a rapid pace, he reiterates that these supply shortages have forced them to focus more on partnerships" and to double down on the community. He adds that both himself and his team have been dealing with the problems by "keeping spirits high, and hosting in-store events and online streams along with open decks for the colleges and schools.

As stocks start to pick up slowly, the supply chain still faces issues and might not see a full return to its pre-pandemic, pre-Brexit state for some time. Some of the very popular products are still on backorders, Lee said, although hes hopeful for that to pick up again in the near future.

Find out more about DJ Tech Tools latest study here.

Gemma Ross is Mixmags Digital Intern, follow her on Twitter

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It's been tough on everyone: How Brexit has impacted the DJ equipment supply chain - Mixmag

There is much talk that the fuel shortages and empty supermarket shelves we are seeing (UK fuel crisis could go on for further week despite military help, 4 October) have been caused by the lack of lorry drivers, and that this is a problem that predated Brexit. On the face of it, this could have been the case. However, the UKs exit from the EU removed the advantages of cabotage. This is an efficient system that has green benefits as it eases the movement of goods. It allows previously empty journeys to be replaced by paying loads that fill gaps in the logistics network, preventing such vehicle and driver shortages.

Being part of the EUs cabotage system meant that European- or UK-registered lorries could transport goods from a trucks home country to the destination country, be it Manchester or Milan. Cabotage allowed any EU-registered vehicle to pick up a return load from Manchester and take it to London, or Paris toBrussels. From Brussels, anotherload could be collected and delivered to Berlin or Warsawor Cambridge.

But leaving the EU has limited the ability of European trucks operating in the UK to take up our shortfall. It has also removed the incentive for EU trucks to travel to the UK. As a result, many European trucks travel empty to Dover or another exit port. It is not just the shortage of drivers that is a problem, but also the absence of vehicles. So the shortfalls are a direct result of the UK leaving the EU and the Tory governments incompetentnegotiations.Peter Morris Kings Lynn, Norfolk

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Brexit to blame for empty trucks and shelves - The Guardian

Michael Caine has clarified his political views on Boris Johnson in a brand new interview.

The 88-year-old actor, who has often voted Conservative in the past, was in favour of Brexit and still maintains his position despite recent issues surrounding the UKs supply chain.

Oh, thats teething trouble, Caine told The Guardian.

Its obviously not going to go well immediately. I mean, I dont know whats going to happen. Ive got to wait for Boris to come back off holiday. I mean, to do that, to go on holiday right now, its unbelievable. Empty shelves. People queueing for petrol. And you think: Wait a minute. Hes gone to Marbella?

Reflecting on Johnson as Prime Minster, Caine added: Oh, I supported him. I thought he was great. But now Im very disappointed in him. He made a big mistake there, going to Marbella.

Lets see if when he comes back he can settle it all. Otherwise we might have a socialist government.

In 2019, Caine reiterated his belief that Brexit was a good decision.

The actor stated that he thinks its important for the UK to be in charge of their own future even if it means being poorer.

Michael Caine has reflected on his political beliefs in a new interview

(Getty Images)

Speaking on the Today show, he said: People say Oh, youll be poor, youll be this, youll be that. I say Id rather be a poor master of my fate than having someone I dont know making me rich by running it.

The actor claimed that fears of a no-deal Brexit were a result of scare tactics.

What I see is Im being ruled by people I dont know, who no one elected, and I think of that as fascist, he said, adding: In the long run, though, itll come around.

See original here:

Michael Caine: Brexit voter thought Boris Johnson was great but is now very disappointed in Prime Minister - The Independent

[This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.]

The media was full of stories about lengthy hold-ups at customs and empty shelves in supermarkets. This has included cliff-edge falls in exports of agricultural produce like beef, milk and cheese, for example, after the UK and EU failed to agree an alignment in standards that would have enabled free trade to continue.

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There has since been some improvement, with the latest figures showing that exports and imports with the EU in the three months to August 2021 were better than the three months before. Equally, however, there is evidence that the UK has lost market share in Europe due to Brexit, as the EUs imports from other countries have picked up following the Covid crisis.

Yet the raw export and import figures alone can only tell you so much about what has happened to British trade. You need to disentangle the effects of Brexit from from a myriad of other variables that can skew the numbers not least Covid. This is a complicated problem that will take some time to resolve, even though the large relative fall in UK exports to Europe suggests that Brexit is the main culprit.

At the same time, however, it would be wrong to focus too much on 2021 when looking at the effects of Brexit on UK trade. We have just published a new paper looking at how it affected UK trade between 2015 and 2018. It shows for the first time that fears about Brexit weakened the UKs trading position long before the vote to leave the EU even took place. It also points to a long-term adjustment in trading relationships that will continue for many years to come.

Our approach

We originally started examining the effects of the Brexit vote back in 2017. Using the same method that has in fact just won the Nobel prize for economics, we sought to screen out other effects on the data by comparing the UKs exports to particular EU countries before and after the June 2016 referendum with other pairs of comparable trading nations. We chose pairs of nations to compare from a large pool of possibilities, for example using trading between Japan and South Korea to compare France and the UK.

Since then, we have extended and revised our study considerably. Unlike almost all other studies, we now take account of the likelihood that Brexit worries started to have an economic effect even further back in time around the time of the surprise Conservative general election win in May 2015. Indeed, Britains goods exports to non-EU countries started falling as well.

The likeliest explanation for these results is that UK goods exporters are highly dependent on EU countries as part of their supply chain. Even a modest increase in uncertainty surrounding such chains seems to have persuaded customers to look elsewhere irrespective of whether they are in the EU. Notably, Britains imports of goods from the EU and elsewhere only began declining after the referendum.

By the time we get to March 2018 in our new paper, Britains goods exports to the EU were already 20 per cent to 25 per cent below trend, while its goods exports to non-EU countries were 15 per cent below trend. We also extended our analysis to services, which account for about half of Britains exports. Here we only have data on aggregate exports, rather than on trade with specific partners, but again we find that British exports started falling in 2015, albeit more after the referendum, and were about eight per cent below trend by early 2018.

What this means

The falls in exports to the EU since January are part of a longer, larger decline dating back to 2015. Changing trading patterns takes time for firms to find new partners or renew or terminate contracts. That means that much of the effect of Brexit on trade started with importers in other countries anticipating difficulties and making changes to their suppliers far in advance of the UK formally leaving the EU.

Because these are such slow processes, it is likely that there will continue to be adjustment over many years to come. So despite the UKs deals with non-EU countries (which, before the Australia trade deal, were basically rollovers of existing deals), its competitiveness worldwide has been hit by the effects of Brexit on UK supply chains.

A caveat should be that some of the fall in demand for Britains produce might be offset by a cheaper pound. Sterling fell sharply in the run-up to the referendum, and although it has stayed around the same level since 2016, many believe it will fall further in future as a result of Brexit.

If so, that could mean more demand for British exports, but it would also mean imports will be more expensive. So while, say, Australian wine might no longer bear tariffs, its price could still increase overall. At a time when there are already concerns about inflation, this is another factor that could drive prices higher.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

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Brexit fears started hitting UK trade as early as 2015, new research shows Terence Huw Edwards and Mustapha Douch - The Scotsman

AS Henry Ford would never have said, you can have any colour politics you like over the coming weeks, as long as they are green.

Anyone would think there was a United Nations Climate Change Conference happening near here soon.

The Herald turned its front page green this morning to mark the start of a new series of investigations by the paper and The Ferret, this time focusing on all things environmental.

In London, Boris Johnson joined forces with Bill Gates at a Global Investment Summit aimed at attracting overseas funding for UK projects.

Besides the event at the Science Museum there was a reception in Downing Street and at Windsor Castle, hosted by the Queen.

The new, post-Brexit global Britain is being lit by the UK Government in pleasant shades of green, the better to persuade investors to get on board and sceptical Conservative MPs to stay on side.

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Alison Rowat: Post-Brexit global Britain is being lit by the UK Government in pleasant shades of green - HeraldScotland