Would rejoining the EU be the best growth strategy?
4/29/202644 min
How much did Brexit cost the UK? Would rejoining make us much richer? And if US managers are PSG players, are British ones more like Aston Villa’s?
Robert talks to Stanford Professor Nick Bloom about his influential forecast, recently adopted by Rachel Reeves, that quitting the EU made Britain 8% or £240bn poorer than it would otherwise have been.
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Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsNick Bloom· Guest0:01
That battle bus claiming more money for the NHS, that was completely wrong. Look, if you told the British electorate, "Hey, you know what? You can vote for Brexit. You know, it's gonna cost you £2,000 a year, but you want less immigrants and you want, yeah, I don't know, cheaper housing 'cause there's less people around, you can have it." The problem is that was never what was promised. There was promised more spending on the NHS, which, uh, which has basically turned out to be an absolute lie.
Robert Peston· Host0:22
I mean, my rough and ready calculation is on a £3 trillion economy, we're looking at 240 billion of income that has disappeared. Is that right?
Nick Bloom· Guest0:33
This is an enormous loss of money.
Robert Peston· Host0:36
[upbeat music] Hello and welcome to The Rest is Money with me, Robert Peston. Uh, I think Steph McGovern is off s- solving crime again or whatever she does in her spare time, but I'm thrilled, uh, that I'm joined by the distinguished Stanford economics professor, Nick Bloom. Nick, very good to see you. And I think m- most of what we'll talk about today is the, um, report that you did on the costs of Brexit, uh, which pleased some people and infuriated others [chuckles]. Um, and I was quite struck, I don't know if you regarded this as a badge of honor or, um, something, uh, that you'd rather not have happened,