Yahoo Finance Like a football manager, remainers can only see the other team's fouls
Both sides in the Brexit debate did some embellishing, so those who wanted to stay in the EU should stop calling for a replay
The post-match interview is a familiar part of TV’s coverage of football. Win or lose, managers are put in front of a camera to give their assessment of the match.
Football fans know the drill: when a team has lost, the manager can reel off a list of blatantly bad refereeing calls that have cost his side the game, but he is always unsighted when it comes to offences committed by his own side. As a long-time Spurs season ticket holder, I have observed that Arsène Wenger, the Arsenal manager, is the master of this technique for explaining away defeat.
Those still having trouble accepting the result of the EU referendum in June seem to be taking their cue from the Arsenal boss. They see what they want to see and ignore everything else.
A Wenger-style interview on the referendum campaign would go something like this:
Post-match interviewer: “What are your thoughts on the result?”
AW: “I thought we were clearly the better team but were robbed of victory because the other side cheated. The claim that leaving the EU would result in an extra £350m a week for the NHS was a complete lie.”
PMI: But what about the fouls committed by your side? The Treasury forecast that the economy would plunge straight into recession in the event of a leave vote, for example?
AW: My view of that was obscured.
PMI: How about the idea that there would be an emergency budget involving £30bn of tax increases and spending cuts? Wasn’t that a bit over the top?
AW: I saw nothing wrong with that challenge.
The Europe that exists in the imagination of many on the remain side is not the one that exists in reality
Remain supporters may well be suffering from collective amnesia about the Treasury’s blatant scare tactics in the run-up to the referendum, but those on the other side are not. As one member of the audience from last week’s BBC Question Time in Wakefield noted: “Whatever happened to the 10% fall in house prices?”
The truth is that both sides in the Brexit debate embellished, obfuscated and misrepresented. That’s hardly surprising because politics, like football, is a contact sport and when you put two well-matched teams up against each other you should expect crunching tackles and a few yellow cards.
Instead of arguing about the result and seeking for the match to be replayed, the remain side might be better off working out why it lost. One key reason was that the Europe that exists in the imagination of many on the remain side is not the one that exists in reality. Immigration was an important factor in deciding the referendum and the reason people have been coming to the UK is because jobs are easier to find.
The presidential runoff in Austria and the referendum in Italy this weekend are a reminder that the Brexit vote had a European dimension: it was influenced by the wretched performance of the eurozone since its creation 15 years ago. The Italian economy is no bigger than it was at the turn of the millennium and persistent double-digit unemployment means that Marine Le Pen will be in the runoff in the French presidential election.
Remain chose to ramp up “Project Fear” rather than make the pitch that by being inside the single market but outside the single currency the UK had the best of both worlds. No attempt was made to change tactics even when the game was slipping away.
The remain side believe that all is not lost. It is confident that 2017 will see a change in UK attitudes towards Brexit because higher inflation will lead to weaker growth in living standards. This, though, suggests a continued reliance on the long-ball tactics of Project Fear, with the assumption that a squeeze on real incomes will lead to buyers’ remorse on the part of those who voted to leave. This is possible but not certain.
For a start, the Brexit side will argue that the economy was doing fine until the remainers threw a spanner in the works by forcing the government to delay the start of divorce proceedings. Growth was 0.5% in the third quarter and the early signs are that it is on course for something similar in the fourth quarter.
Moreover, the squeeze on real incomes has two dimensions: prices going up as a result of a falling pound and wages being held down. The latter will be blamed on the increase in the supply of labour and linked to the failure to control immigration.
Finally, the spotlight in 2017 is not just going to be on the UK: elections in the Netherlands, France and Germany mean it will be on Europe as well.
Ahead of negotiations, there has been much focus on the UK government’s plan (or lack of one) and whether it makes sense. Little has been heard about the other side, other than to assume that the other 27 members of the European Union hold all the cards.
No question, it would be possible for the EU team to make life difficult for the UK. For example, Europe’s chief Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, would only need to say that talks were going badly and that no deal was in prospect to send the pound tumbling.
This, though, is not a cost-free strategy. A weaker pound means exports from the EU27 to the UK would become more expensive. And since eurozone growth, such as it is, depends on exports, this would lead to higher unemployment and more political discontent.
Similarly, attempts to make life difficult for the City of London could easily backfire. European companies and governments come to London to borrow money for one simple reason: it is cheaper to do so in the UK than anywhere else. That’s a function of Europe’s economic geography: countries have tended to specialise in what they are good at. The Germans do the precision engineering; the French do the food and drink; Britain, as Mark Carney pointed out last week, is Europe’s investment banker. The Italian government, for one, might not relish the prospect of paying more to finance its massive national debt.
Going it alone involves obvious risks for the UK, but Europe’s economic weakness has made it less scary for many voters. In 1973, membership looked like an opportunity to join the big league: Leicester City having the chance to play Real Madrid.
Remain supporters say – rightly – that Britain is a mid-table side a long way short of Champions League class. But on the other side of the Channel, only Germany remains a member of the economic elite. France is like Newcastle, a big club that has dropped out of the big league; Italy is like Aston Villa, in danger of dropping into the third tier, and Greece is Coventry City, in danger of going out of business altogether. Remainers seem to have trouble seeing this. Presumably the fourth official is blocking the view.
