EU and Chancellor's forecasts

Two from my Facebook today

1 The problem with the Chancellor asking me to believe him today is that many of his previous forecasts have been woefully wrong (vide the amount of borrowing) so I am left scratching my head (and that is before a wider history of the Treasury e.g. their views on ERM). However if I follow some convoluted speak, he is saying that in 2030 each household might be £4,300 p.a. worse off (not against their income today but against what it might otherwise be (inflation vectored in? and what otherwise might it be in toto?)). This is hardly telling stuff and it is certainly very biased. How much do you value your independence and the democracy of saying our Parliament ought to be our supreme governor (under our constitutional monarch of course)? Words, words, Wordsworth.


2 The EU debate figures don't really seem to me to run conclusively either way. So why are so many of the big boys like the IMF, the French Economics Minister Macron, Obama, leaning on us so heavily? It has been suggested on my wall (scroll down) that all sorts of shennagins will take place to turn back our No vote if we head there. I don't know about that, I would prefer evidence rather than assertion. But it does occur to me that the sense of desperation by the stay campaign and from these big voices comes down to this? Is Europe sanguinely confident it will prosper without us? Is it going to be unphased at our departure? Perhaps the issue these big boys and elites are not keen on facing is whether our departure exposes the Emperor's new clothes of Europe. It exposes the EU as the fundamentally undemocratic operation it assuredly is, it reveals the weakness in its finances, its fundamentally uncompetitive nature. Germany basically carrying the rest. In other words a No from Great Britain really would precipitate a wider European crisis in "the project". Perhaps it is this prospect (more than whether Britain would really be worse or better off which seems very difficult to call) which is the absolute driver in propelling the remain camp to utter its strident warnings and to seek to involve the American President in our affairs. At some point on this logic, (and following the last Referendum Precedent) our Monarch may be discretely called upon to utter some words. What they are and whether they are issued will be so telling. If She refuses to say anything, I might conclude She thinks the British Commonwealth is worth more to the United Kingdom than the Europundits reckon.