GFTU BGCM 2019 Minutes

they sent out a massive vote. 17.4 million people voted to leave the European

Union. John McDonnell calls it the biggest byelection in history and I think

there is something in that. People were deeply, deeply unhappy and said,

“Listen to us, we demand to be heard, we want a different sort of settlement”.

So that was the third big anniversary.

So where are we now three years on, 40 years on, 10 years on? Nothing

really has happened. We were supposed to have left the European Union by

now and we have not. If you listen to what George Osborne and Mark Carney

said at the time, we were supposed to be in the middle of a ginormous

recession by now, unemployment was supposed to have gone up by 500,000,

we are supposed to have had a massive collapse of house prices, the

economy was supposed to have gone into a two year recession. That has not

happened either. Essentially what has happened is that the economy has

gone into a sort of holding pattern where it has grown, but not especially

strongly. It has been pootling along at about 1%/1 ½% growth per year. Some

of that was going to happen anyway, because pre-2015 what Osborne did was

boost the economy unsustainably through generating a housing market boom,

so the reaction to that, plus the welfare cuts, were bound to slow the economy

anyway, but essentially the economy has been driven for the last couple of

years by the consumer. Consumers have carried on spending. What has been

the real problem with the economy is that investment has been incredibly weak,

business investment has been poor and it is not entirely surprising that that is

the case. Businesses do not like uncertainty and until the uncertainty is

resolved about what Britain’s future relationship is going to be with the

European Union, it is inevitable that businesses are going to sit on their hands

and wait for some clarity. So the longer the uncertainty, having another six

months to decide what Britain is going to do, if, indeed, it does decide what it is

going to do in that six month period, just increases the uncertainty and means

that the economy is going to remain in this fairly low key, low growth, low

quality growth environment. So that is really where the economy is.

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