Coppola Comment

The EU has laid out its negotiating strategy for Brexit. Well, not officially yet, of course - the letter triggering Article 50 won't be delivered until tomorrow, 29th March. But as is its wont, it has made its intentions clear in the press. In an op-ed in the FT , Michel Barnier, the EU's chief negotiator, has stated in no uncertain terms how he expects the negotiations to proceed. He identifies three crucial issues that must be resolved before there can be any discussion of future trading arrangements between the EU and UK: the rights of EU citizens living and working in the UK continuing funding for current beneficiaries of EU programmes the border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.  The first of these responds to Theresa May's continued refusal to guarantee the rights of EU citizens currently living in the UK. Tellingly, Barnier makes no mention of UK citizens living in the EU. If May won't guarantee EU citizens' rights, he implie...

"The Germans won't want tariffs on their car exports to the UK", said my father the other day. I have to agree. No-one likes tariffs, especially when they are used to having none. But it was his next comment that made me pause. My father's idea is that the EU will allow the UK to have tariff-free access to the EU's markets after Brexit in order to placate the powerful German car manufacturing lobby. He's not alone in this view: it has been repeatedly stated by Brexit promoters, both during the Leave campaign and since the vote last June. The obvious rejoinder is that the EU (ex-UK) is 27 countries, not one, and although Germany is powerful it does not call the shots with regard to trade. Although a qualified majority vote is sufficient to allow the UK to leave the EU, a new free trade deal between the UK and the EU post Brexit would require the agreement of all 27 members, and in some cases sub-sovereign agreement too. The recent trade deal between th...

"No deal for Britain is better than a bad deal", says Theresa May. Her Brexit sidekick David Davis appeals to MPs not to "tie her hands". And that master of flannel, trade secretary Liam Fox, says that leaving without a deal would be "not just bad for the UK, it's bad for Europe as a whole". These three statements sum up the hopes of the Brexiteers. The idea seems to be that if the UK adopts a really strong stance in its forthcoming negotiations with the EU, the Europeans will be so horrified at the prospect of the UK leaving without any agreement that they will cave in and give the UK what it wants. Welcome to the Brexit game of chicken. On the face of it, the UK government's negotiating principles appear sound: set out your red lines, make it clear that you won't tamely agree to everything the other side wants and that you will walk away rather than give ground on things that really matter. But if you are going to play brinkmanshi...

Adam Smith's "invisible hand" is perhaps one of the most misunderstood concepts in economics. It is usually interpreted to mean that when individuals all operate according to their own self-interest, their actions somehow combine to create a well-ordered, well-functioning society "as if guided by an invisible hand". To be fair, this statement about the "invisible hand" (from the Theory of Moral Sentiments ) does seem to mean exactly that: [The rich] consume little more than the poor, and in spite of their natural selfishness and rapacity…they divide with the poor the produce of all their improvements. They are led by an invisible hand to make nearly the same distribution of the necessaries of life, which would have been made, had the earth been divided into equal portions among all its inhabitants, and thus without intending it, without knowing it, advance the interest of the society, and afford means to the multiplication of the species. This...

Inflation is back. Here is the change in the consumer price index (CPI) for January 2017, according to ONS : Well, this doesn't look too serious. CPI is barely reaching the Bank of England's target of 2%. It has been much higher for most of the last decade, and yet the Bank of England has kept interest rates at historic lows. But consumer price inflation - the prices that people pay for goods in the shops - is only one side of the equation. On the other side is producer price inflation (PPI), the prices that companies pay for the materials and energy they need to produce goods and services. The picture here is entirely different, as this table from ONS's January 2017 producer price inflation report  shows: Annualised producer price inflation has risen dramatically in the last six months. It reached double digits in October 2016 and currently stands at an astonishing 20.5%. Most of that is due to sharply rising import prices, of which by far the most important ...

The Co-Op bank is putting itself up for sale. It announced today that it will offer all of its shares for sale, including the Co-Op Group's 20% stake and the shares currently owned by a consortium of American hedge funds, institutional investors and small investors. The decision follows on from last month's disclosure that it was facing a full-year loss for the third year running and would fail to meet capital requirements set by the Prudential Regulatory Authority (PRA) for some years to come. It has almost certainly been made under pressure from the PRA. The decision to offer the bank for sale was undoubtedly very painful for the Board. But it has been obvious for some time that the Co-Op Bank's recovery plan was heading for the rocks. Both the 2014 and the 2015 reports contained warnings from the directors, endorsed by  the auditors, that the bank may not be able to continue as a going concern. There is little doubt that the forthcoming 2016 report, due at th...

Today, the Guardian has a report on conditions in the refugee camp at Dunkirk, just up the French coast from the infamous "jungle" at Calais that was cleared at the end of 2016. "Women and children 'endure rape, beatings and abuse' inside Dunkirk's refugee camp" proclaims the headline. This is of course the shiny new refugee camp , supposedly built to international standards, that was opened less than a year ago. It makes harrowing reading. Here is an excerpt: The witness statement from another volunteer, who could speak Arabic, describes how a 14-year-old from Morocco appeared to have been raped and could not sit down and kept repeating that he felt so “ashamed”.  Their account stated: “He didn’t want anything, he was only crying and asking for his mum. He had been badly beaten." The worker also described how a young child had been sexually assaulted on site, leaving her mother so shocked she had been rendered mute. “We have also seen i...