Gross Domestic Idiocy

I’ve seen a lot of angry Remainians asking, nay demanding, that the leave camp produce their own fictional facts and figures to show what Brexit actually means. But isn’t this the point, nobody knows? None of the forecast doom and gloom is reliable because it all assumes that foreign investment will end, trade will cease, day will no longer follow night and in the latest laughable idiocy, Gromit, the former leader of the new Nazi Party has declared that the world as we know it will end. Always willing to put himself out there for a laugh Ed Miliband returns to the fray with a statement that even makes the Edstone look serious.

They all want to know – and growing numbers of fence-sitters are now prompted to ask – what will happen to the economy if we leave? While a few  voices, such as Neil Woodford’s, have risen above the clamour to say all will be well, there is a sort of awkward silence in the Leave ranks. This is because, as previously stated, nobody knows. It entirely depends on who runs the show and how the economy is actually measured and for whose benefit it is managed. Because in or out, the current model is warped and dangerous.

Do you rejoice when you read yet another story of a local authority knocking together two or more dwellings to house the family of fifteen who live entirely on benefits? If so, you definitely should vote to remain; your utter disregard for the country deserves a moribund future home as a vote drone to endorse more such stupidity. Because this is the current model; growth at any cost. No wonder we have piss-poor productivity figures when our national wealth is not really measured by what we produce, but by what it all costs. Gross GDP is meaningless and misleading.

Under the EU economic growth is achieved by growing the population. And given that the indigenous peoples of Europe no longer wanted enormous numbers of children the answer, they saw with myopic eyes, was immigration and expansion. But while more and more lower and lower paid workers might grow the headline GDP figure, the value per head declines and with it, the point. If a million people share a billion pounds, we’re all grand. But if two million people share a billion and a half we’re all poorer. And that is even assuming even distribution. I see no demonstrations against people being better off.

So, this is what remaining in the EU has to offer; more of exactly the same skewed and deceptive reporting of tractor production. More dodgy dossiers designed to tell you you have never had it so good while the world around you crumbles. This model relies on the presumption that there is no end to the number of people we can take in; that immigration can never be a bad thing; that we need the immigrants to pay the pensions. But ask yourself this – where does it end? And who will pay the pensions of the fecund immigrants and their children’s children?

There! Now we are all better off...

I don’t believe we can go on like this. Neither does Migration Watch, which has said that current levels of immigration are unsustainable. Why not strive for a stable population and aim to improve everybody’s chances? Why not have an economy we can control and run for the benefit of UK citizens, not for the EU machine? So, if you want to know what a post-Brexit economy would look like, John Major is quite right. It wouldn’t look like what we have now; this could only be a good thing.