It's true they say they won't put their next model in Sunderland. Taking a longer term view though what cars do you think British people will buy and drive if trade with the continent is interrupted?

As for the behaviour of the campaigns, the effect of this referendum will be felt long after the people leading the various campaigns are dead, so if you're thinking of voting based on personalities it would be better not to vote at all.

Who is Oliver?

Professor Minford addresses that pretty well in the video. I highly recommend watching it (particularly after the first 5 mins which are not about economics).

Why do you see Baroness Warsi as an experienced politician?

I jumped forward to the bit where he says 80% of UK laws will be made in the EU.

This is simply ******ed nonsense, its pretty embarrassing for someone in his position to say something like that.

He's a professor of economics not politics and I assume he's thinking of a particular subset of laws rather than all laws.

Seriously. If you aren't willing to spend 30 minutes listening to him talking about trade and tariffs - while quizzed by pro-EU MPs - then please don't spend 30 minutes voting. Just watch the WWE version of politics with Farage and Clegg bashing each other for the lols and leave the decision up to people willing to get informed.

77% of cars made in the UK are exported, with 57% of those going to the EU. The amount going to China has fallen recently.

If I hear him say something a-priori ridiculously absurd about a field outside of his speciality thereby revealing a high level of irrational bias, I am hardly going to trust him on anything he has to say about anything to do with trade or whatever as he is obviously bringing that irrationality into his professional life.

The Warsi 'defection' was funny because the immediate reaction of the remain camp was 'huh! Didn't know you were on our side' and just this once everyone believed them.

To be honest, Minford's argument seems pretty shallow and he conflates trading outside of trade agreements with free trade. As if trade agreements by definition limit a country's ability to trade freely.

He mentions Japan, the US and Singapore as examples of countries who trade freely and indepently, to then continue on how irrelevant free trade agreements are. But those examples are all countries that actively engage in free trade agreements with the rest of the world.

Maybe he becomes more convincing in the rest of the video, but his start was very unconvincing.

Am probably in the top 99% percentile of level of informed for the UK public so FU and your one obviously horribly biased video.

http://webarchive.nationalarchives.g...n/sty-car.html

Based on this ONS data, imports of cars from the EU are 3 times exports to the EU by value. Under the (unlikely) scenario where we stop importing those cars, what do we drive - if not UK produced cars?

As I said in my edit, I assume he's thinking of some subset of laws when he says that. When he gets onto economics his main arguments hold water on their own grounds rather than "trust me I'm a professor" - with the exception of a few things he says about models he's run.

Why on earth would we stop importing cars from the EU?

We did this already btw, the whole idea that somehow trade is binary on/off and somehow stops completely if we Brexit is utterly false.

Trade will get impacted and most probably lessened, but the whole point is that the UK has to absorb that loss as a single economy whereby the EU absorbs it across several economies.

He's not actually against trade agreements but he doesn't think they are as important as people think. In the case of a small country such as the UK you basically sell at the world price whatever and if a receiving country puts a tariff on something then it just increases the costs to its own consumers - he characterizes it as self-harm. We don't have the capacity to sell to the whole world at once anyway whereas the US for example is bigger and is in a different position.

The other really strong argument he puts forward is making industry more competitive by allowing them to buy inputs at world prices rather than EU prices.

But the main thing is to get out from behind the tariff wall the EU has with the rest of the world.

Minford is utter hard core free market fanatic, so all his work will be predicated on showing that if the UK leaves the EU and then embarks on unilateral free trade, e.g. does not charge anyone a tariff regardless of if they charge us one, our economy will flourish.

So Lektor cant be that familiar AT ALL with what this means in practise given his car example.

If EU charges us a tariff, but we dont charge the EU one, why would anyone make cars in the UK?

Make them in the EU dont pay tariff to EU, dont pay tariff to export to UK, make in UK have to pay tariff to export to EU.

So yea, say goodbye to the car industry if we try it Minfords's way.

He is basically a lunatic who has a dream about der free free free markets and does not like howible realities of how hard we would get ****ed by off shoring if we went unilateral.

Anything that can be made abroad would be.

Its ok though, the invisible hand will save us.

^ So what would the value of the pound be under that scenario?

Wouldn't it be at a level where imports and exports would rebalance?

For example anything that continental Europe currently exports to the RoW we could do cheaper.

It would make imports cheaper if we had no tariffs, you will have to show some work on how it makes exports cheaper. I could only see it hurting our trade balance.

Oh wait you mean because of the weak pound, yea but all our input prices go up, so its not clear if end up ahead.

So the argument is we can weaken the pound in relation and keep imports prices the same as they were when we had tariffs, but our exports will now be cheaper?

leftist media elites like to remain in the eu superstate

Shocking!!

BB's posts have achieved poe's law status

lol I'm not the one that got all wound up about twitch chat saying offensive things

I guess all you can do when your posting is as terrible as yours is say "look, a squirrel!"

Soros weighs in:

Sterling devaluation will be bigger than 1992

"Brexiters seem to recognise that a sharp devaluation would be almost inevitable after Brexit, but argue that this would be healthy, despite the big losses of purchasing power for British households. In 1992 the devaluation actually proved very helpful to the British economy, and subsequently I was even praised for my role in helping to bring it about.

But I don’t think the 1992 experience would be repeated. That devaluation was healthy because the government was relieved of its obligation to “defend” an overvalued pound with damagingly high interest rates after the breakdown of the exchange rate mechanism. This time, a large devaluation would be much less benign than in 1992, for at least three reasons."

I came across this:

http://www.politico.eu/article/nigel...antanas-guoga/

Tony G offers Farage £1m charity bet on brexit

Well it would weaken due to market forces but yes imports from RoW would be the same in pounds (cheaper converted to RoW currencies) than now, as would be inputs to industry from outside (same in pounds, cheaper converted into RoW currencies) and so products could be sold to the outside world at a lower price than currently (again, the same price in pounds, lower price in RoW currencies). That's what the Brexit economy would look like under the (unlikely) scenario where there were asymmetrical tariffs with Europe, they would find our exports replacing theirs in the RoW markets.

But it's not really about the economy. The thing that has made me think you people still in the UK should vote for Brexit is (somewhat ironically) living in Slovakia, and learning what quality of life is actually about, and it's not about the things that people on either side in the Westminister bubble part of the campaign are talking about.

Thanks. I remember him now. He also did the one on Hungary's refugee policy I think. IIRC he was anti-EU on that, he thought Hungary shouldn't observe its Schengen obligations to police the external border and just ignore the treaties like the 1st class members do all the time.

In this one he's mostly talking about the flag-wavers in the westminister bubble part of the campaign. I agree they're awful. Actually another reason to vote Brexit is to take away Nigel Farage's UKIP's raison d'etre, but in any case we should think on the basis of the coming decades, not who's in politics in 2016.

I am interested in your explanation on how market forces magically balance the currency with the price differential gained from having no tariff, but its moot anyway because obviously if we steal all of Europe's trade (lol) the last thing we will have is a weak currency.

Also we wont just have asymmetrical tariffs with Europe, we will have them with everyone, again this makes UK super vulnerable to offshoring, make the thing in China dont pay monies to import to China, dont pay monies to import to UK, make in UK pay monies to import to China. Its ok though, having no tariffs will magically balance the currency against any country we might export to, crazy talk.

If we leave the EU and as is looking likely, the pound devalues more than the price differential gained from having no tariff (which probably wont happen anyway), obviously inputs to industry go up as the weaker the currency the more our imports cost rise.