mraniki

‘His Brexit is responsible for thousands of British citizens living abroad losing their UK bank accounts. Funny old world…’

How would Britons vote if the EU referendum were taking place in 2023?

A majority of Britons (55%) say that, were the EU referendum taking place now, seven years after the original date, they would vote to Remain. Three in ten 31% say they would vote to Leave. This gives a headline voting intention of 64% to 36%.

The results show that one in six Leave voters (18%) now say that they would vote to Remain were the EU referendum being held now. Almost three quarters (73%) say they would still vote to leave the EU.

Remember those doom-laden prophesies that Brexit would render the UK an isolated irrelevance on the world stage? Or that it would trigger a flight of multi-national companies from these shores?

Two announcements this week have given the lie to both those shibboleths, while hammering home the tangible benefits of leaving the EU.

Tata Group, the Indian conglomerate which owns Jaguar Land Rover, will construct its £4 billion electric car battery plant in Somerset, creating thousands of skilled jobs.

The firm considered locating the cutting-edge factory in Spain. But thanks to Brexit, Britain won the battle.

Unshackled from the bloc, we were able to provide subsidies quickly, rather than getting bogged down for years by the deadening bureaucracy in Brussels.

The second Brexit bonus was joining the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trading alliance which generates 13 per cent of global income. Stuck in the economically-calcifying EU, striking such an exciting deal would have been forbidden.

Predictably, the anti-Brexit brigade – led inevitably by Labour and the BBC – belittles these achievements. Obsessive hatred of Britain's newly restored sovereignty blinds them to any advantages it brings.

But couldn't the Government at least trumpet the benefits? There have, after all, been notable successes: The vaccine rollout and our early, strong support for Ukraine to name but two.

We know Chancellor Jeremy Hunt is a Remainer. But it is inexplicable that Brexiteer Rishi Sunak seems so reluctant to champion and exploit it.

Brexit is not just about constructing new commercial and diplomatic relationships around the world. It is about imagining and building the country Britain can be in this new, exciting era.

Despite at times being disappointed by our politicians' lack of ambition, the Mail remains convinced of its almost limitless potential. The PM should embrace it.

For if the project flops, it will be seen as a catastrophic Tory failure.

Can't BBC say sorry? Whenever a media organisation finds itself in hot water after making a mistake, what a commotion the BBC causes.

Clambering aboard its moral high horse, it howls with outrage and demands apologies. But if the corporation gets something badly wrong, it is not so quick to wear sackcloth.

Take the Coutts scandal. Nigel Farage suggested last month that the private bank had closed his account due to his political views. But the Remainer-packed BBC gleefully claimed it was because the ex-Ukip leader was no longer wealthy enough.

Nigel Farage (pictured) suggested last month that the private bank had closed his account due to his political views. But the Remainer-packed BBC gleefully claimed it was because the ex-Ukip leader was no longer wealthy enough

This turned out to be a pack of lies, briefed by the bank itself. It is outrageous that the BBC behaved less like the state broadcaster, and more like Coutts' spin doctor.

Of course, no one should be surprised. The 'woke' values the bank flaunts are shared entirely by the corporation.

The financial bullying of Mr Farage was an assault on free speech.

Last night, he received a mealy-mouthed apology from the boss of NatWest, which owns Coutts. Is it too much to hope for the BBC to also say sorry?

Eco-egos out-clowned

Just Stop Oil activists plainly get a perverse thrill from disrupting our lives.

So how satisfying that these eco-clowns got a taste of their own medicine when a planned 'slow walk' road demo in London was thwarted by a counter-protest.

True, the heroes were YouTube pranksters. But a serious point remains.

If politicians and police continue to twiddle their thumbs as environmental doom cults bring chaos, there is a risk the public will take the law into their own hands.

Brexit’s impact on the UK’s cycling industry is once again under the spotlight after FLi Distribution’s director blamed the “red tape and barriers to trade” currently affecting businesses as the Huddersfield-based distributor ceased trading with immediate effect.

FLi – which began life in 2008 as FLi Race Team Management, before transitioning to distribution – was known for supplying KTM bikes to the UK for over a decade, a relationship which ended in April this year.

The distributor notified dealers and suppliers of its decision to cease trading earlier this month, with director Colin Williams citing the impact of Brexit, the complexities and restrictions surrounding UK and EU trading, and the difficulties facing the bike industry in the post-Covid lockdown period as the main reasons behind FLi’s demise.

Confirming the news, Williams posted on LinkedIn: “That’s it, FLi is done. Thank you to everyone who’s supported FLi over the past 15-plus years… it would not have been possible without all of you who’ve helped out in thousands of ways, making 99 percent of my time running FLi so much fun. So if you’ve helped in any way, thank you, it’s been a great ride.

“But if you voted for Brexit, please realise this is 90 percent because of your decision back in 2016. I have no idea what will be next, but as the people close to me know, whatever it is, it’ll be better than the last 18 months.

“I’m done fighting, I’m done with the red tape and the barriers to trade. It hadn’t been fun for some time, so the time was right to end it now, life is too short. The relief now the decision is made is amazing, but I am so sorry for any negative impacts it will have on anyone and I’m doing my best to resolve any and all of them where I can.”

Earlier this year, Williams told the road.cc Podcast that the bottom line of companies in the UK bike industry is being squeezed like never before, thanks to the supply chain and manufacturing disruption brought on by the pandemic, as well as the impact of Brexit on trade.

He explained that because many brands service the European market through distribution operations within the EU, this means that typically products will arrive in the UK from the bloc – adding on not just administrative burdens but also costs for distributors and retailers here.

Those additional costs have had a crippling effect on the UK’s cycling distributors, with FLi the latest in a growing line of distribution companies to cease trading this year alone.

In May, Livingston-based distributor 2pure entered administration, just months after the company announced that it was restructuring to focus solely on the cycling industry, following what it described as a “highly volatile” 2022 caused by macro-economic events in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

And in March, Moore Large, the leading UK distributor for well-known brands such as Tern Bicycles, Lake, Forme, ETC, Emmelle, and MeThree, entered liquidation, leading to its £35 million product inventory being auctioned off.

Formed from the bike shop opened by John Moore in 1947, the Derby-based distributor was founded 30 years later and owned by the Moore family up until last year when, following growth since the pandemic, the board’s directors bought ownership from the family.

Dale Vanderplank, Adam Garner, Adam Biggs, and Andrew Walker acquired the business on 19 April 2022, with retiring chairman Nigel Moore at the time saying that the “last few years have been particularly successful and it is now the right time for me to hand over the company to the existing management team”.

However, four months ago the company confirmed its closure, adding to an increasingly bleak time for a UK cycle industry beset by inflation, changing consumer habits, overstock, and a challenging economic climate.

Competition and Markets Authority calls for pricing policy reform as it finds high inflation not due to weak competition

The UK competition watchdog has warned supermarkets that it will examine any attempts to rebuild profit margins after the recent fall in inflation and called on the government to reform pricing policies to help consumers.

The Competition and Markets Authority said in a report on Thursday that it had found high food price inflation was not being driven by weak retail competition, but noted that competitive pressure would be important as input costs fell.

Official data this week showed that the rate of consumer price rises declined to 7.9 per cent in June from 8.7 per cent in May, a bigger than expected drop.

The CMA said that now some grocery retailers’ input costs were starting to decline, it had detected signs during its probe that they were planning to begin rebuilding their profit margins. 

The watchdog said it would “monitor this carefully in the months ahead to ensure that people benefit from competitive prices as input costs fall”.

Although food price inflation is at near all-time highs, evidence collected by the CMA suggested that it had not been driven up by competition issues in the sector, which registered a fall in operating profits in the past year.

That decline was due to retailers’ costs increasing faster than revenues, it said, indicating they had not passed on rising costs in full to consumers.

The CMA’s findings in part echo those of the Bank of England, which does not believe that “greedflation” — where companies increase prices beyond the extent that their own price pressures would demand — has played a significant role in the surge in food prices.

However, the regulator said rules on unit pricing — which sets out the cost of weighed foodstuffs, helping shoppers compare prices — needed tightening at a “time when food and other grocery prices are rising”.

In a study of 18 retailers, the CMA found compliance concerns relating to how some displayed unit pricing, but said these were in part the result of rules that allowed for inconsistencies in practices and left scope for interpretation. 

The watchdog cited as one example tea bags “being priced per 100 grams for some products and others being unit priced per each tea bag”, and found “missing or incorrectly calculated unit pricing information both in store and online”.

The CMA urged the government to reform legislation around unit pricing and said it had written to companies that were not fully complying with current rules, warning them of enforcement action.

In response, the government said it would consult on the law in this area, which is retained EU legislation, “to make it work for consumers”. A change in the regulation would mean unit prices would have to be clearly displayed in promotions, including loyalty card price per unit.

PUBLIC OPINION in Britain has long since turned against the view that Brexit was a good idea. According to YouGov, a pollster, 57% of voters now believe that it was a mistake to leave the European Union, the highest share since the referendum in June 2016. Only 32% think it was the right decision (see chart 1). And a new poll from YouGov finds that, for the first time since the referendum, a narrow majority of 51% say that they would vote to rejoin the EU.

There are several reasons why opinion has turned so decisively. Disillusion over unfulfilled promises made by Brexit campaigners in 2016 is another. The economy has not performed strongly since 2016 and the cost of living has shot up. The NHS, to which Brexiteers pledged more money, seems more troubled than ever. And net migration, which many leavers had promised would fall after Brexit, is running at record levels. It is little wonder that as many as one-fifth of those who voted to leave say they have now changed their minds.

The unpopularity of the Conservative government may be yet another factor. For a long period after Boris Johnson’s landslide victory in the December 2019 election, public opinion was strongly supportive of his party, which voters closely identified with Brexit. YouGov’s polling in May shows how much the vote to leave has since hurt the party that championed it: of the 37% of leave voters who said Brexit had been a failure, 75% of leavers blamed it on the Tories (see chart 2). Today Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour Party is on average almost 20 points ahead of Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives in opinion polls, making it probable that the general election likely to be held next year will produce a change of government. On July 20th the governing party may lose three by-elections—all in areas that voted to leave. This does not point to an imminent decision to reopen the issue of Brexit, let alone to seek to rejoin the EU. Far from considering rejoining, Sir Keir has pledged to stick to Mr Johnson’s decisions to leave both the EU’s single market and its customs union. Instead, he talks only of making Brexit work better by aligning more closely with EU food-safety and other rules and seeking new deals in such areas as security and defence, mobility of labour and co-operation over scientific research.

The swing of public opinion away from backing Brexit should make it easier to mend fences with the EU and to strive to form a closer relationship with the bloc. But for several more years at least, it is unlikely to lead to any serious attempt to reverse the decision taken in 2016. ■

UK inflation fell to a 15-month low of 7.9 per cent in June, a bigger drop than anticipated that made it more likely that the Bank of England will raise interest rates by only a quarter point next month. Sterling fell and property stocks rallied on the news.

Annual inflation was down from 8.7 per cent in May, the Office for National Statistics said on Wednesday. The figure was lower than the 8.2 per cent forecast by economists polled by Reuters, ending a four-month period of price growth exceeding forecasts. It was also in line with the 7.9 per cent forecast by the BoE in May and the lowest since March 2022, while underlying “core” inflation also fell slightly to 6.9 per cent. Sterling fell 1.1 per cent against the dollar to $1.2893, its lowest level in a week.

Downing St said it was “encouraging to see headline and core inflation rates falling” but that there was no room for complacency, adding that businesses and families were still suffering from high prices.

Asked whether Rishi Sunak, prime minister, was confident that inflation would halve by the end of the year to 5.4 per cent, his spokesman said: “We have set out that commitment. We are not going to forecast.”

Paul Dales, economist at Capital Economics, said that, while the fall in inflation was unlikely to deter the BoE from increasing interest rates from the current 5 per cent at its next meeting, “it may tilt the balance towards a 25 basis points hike rather than 50 basis points”.

Markets now give a 60 per cent probability to a quarter point rise to 5.25 per cent at the August 3 meeting. Before Wednesday’s news they had been pricing in a better than even chance that the bank would increase rates by a half percentage point to bring inflation back to its 2 per cent target.

Traders now expect BoE benchmark interest rates to peak just below 6 per cent early next year, compared with just above 6 per cent that was expected before the inflation figures.

Lower inflation is likely to ease the pressure on mortgage rates after stronger than expected price and wage growth over the previous months had pushed up interest rate expectations and therefore payments for borrowers.

Shares in UK property groups and housebuilders surged as investors dialled back their expectations for where interest rates might peak.

Persimmon, Barratt and Taylor Wimpey rose 8.9 per cent, 6.2 per cent and 6.1 per cent, respectively, helping London’s FTSE 100 rise by 2 per cent.

Land Securities, one of the UK’s largest landlords, and real estate group Segro were also among the FTSE’s biggest winners on Wednesday.

In one of the most closely watched metrics of Wednesday’s figures, core inflation, which strips out volatile food, energy, alcohol and tobacco prices, declined to 6.9 per cent in June from a 31-year high of 7.1 per cent in the previous month. Analysts had expected core inflation to be unchanged.

Services inflation eased to 7.2 per cent in June from 7.4 per cent in May.

Both core and services inflation are closely watched by BoE policymakers to monitor underlying and domestic price pressures and decide on interest rates.

The data will be welcome news for UK prime minister Rishi Sunak, who has pledged to halve inflation this year before a probable 2024 election.

Chancellor Jeremy Hunt said: “Inflation is falling and stands at its lowest level since last March, but we aren’t complacent and know that high prices are still a huge worry for families and businesses.”

Rachel Reeves, shadow chancellor, said: “Inflation has been persistently high and remains higher than our international peers. This is becoming a hallmark of Tory economic failure.”

Grant Fitzner, ONS chief economist, said that in June “inflation slowed substantially to its lowest annual rate since March 2022, driven by price drops for motor fuels”.

Led by motor fuel, the price of transport fell by an annual rate of 1.8 per cent last month.

Although it remained at historically high levels, food inflation also eased to 17.3 per cent in June, from 18.3 per cent in the previous month. ONS data also showed that the annual growth of producer price inputs, such as parts and materials, turned negative in June for the first time since November 2020. The rate has slowed for the 12th consecutive month from its record annual high of 24.4 per cent in June 2022 to minus 2.7 per cent last month.

Despite the larger than expected decline, UK price growth remained higher than in other G7 countries, with economists blaming a combination of surging energy costs and labour shortages.

In June, US inflation slowed to a 27-month low of 3 per cent, while price growth dropped to a 17-month low of 5.5 per cent in the eurozone.

Dales said: “The UK will probably still have higher rates of inflation than elsewhere for a while yet, but at least the UK is now following the global trend.”

Additional reporting by Mary McDougall