Businesses are delaying investments while they wait for the fog to lift, says the Financial Times' Tim Harford.
Pinned to the wall, this motto famously reminded Bill Clinton’s campaign staff to stay on message as he ran for the US presidency in 1992.Somebody may want to pin it up in the UK Conservative party’s headquarters, because the party has instead managed to involve the entire country in its bitter little civil war over Europe. But economies can survive some rough handling by politicians. Amid the Westminster turmoil, how is the UK economy doing?The stiff-upper-lip response is that it’s fine.
The unpredictable Brexit process has created enormous ambiguity for any business dependent on investment or trade across borders, and knock-on uncertainty for other businesses that work with them. Leaving without a deal would not only cause short-term disruption, it would restart the interminable process of negotiation as Britain tries to figure out the ground rules on pretty much everything.Yet, like Boris Johnson when foreign secretary, one might simply declare: “f**k business”.
Annual household labour income has been falling for two years and is around £1,500 lower than it was projected to be before the referendum. That isn’t going to help, except perhaps to make the UK look a little better by comparison. Alas “better by comparison” does not pay the bills.Of course, the news hasn’t all been bad. The UK’s jobs market remains genuinely impressive. Given what we know about the depressing effect of unemployment, even low-paid, low-productivity jobs are better than no jobs at all.
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