This essay was prompted by an article in the left of centre daily newspaper that I read. In it the journalist (who is an economist) claimed that Brexit would be a non event similar to the millennium bug. It was an article I thought so typical of contemporary journalism, a well written article with a simple story line that ignored inconvenient realities. He dismissed those experts such as the Governor of the Bank of England, stating that they had constantly misread the economic runes and their predictions were always proved to be wrong, so why should we take their warnings of a bad Brexit deal seriously. Instead he preferred to trust the politicians, the realists who would deliver a good Brexit deal. In colossal misreading of history he said that the good guys, the politicians would deliver the best possible of Brexit deals. One can only believe he is ignorant of history, a history in which ill informed and incompetent political leaders led their country into disaster. 

There is one disturbing feature of this article which in so characteristic of contemporary journalism. That is the disparaging of experts and expert knowledge. What he is suggesting is those who know a something about their subject are to be distrusted and instead we should listen to the politicians who know little or nothing about the subject. He trashes the idea that there is something that can be called  human knowledge. As Mark Carney and the British Treasury have so often got things wrong, he claims that this proves that there is nobody who knows what is really going to happen in the economy, least of all the experts. Therefore it is just as well to trust the ‘know little’ and ‘know nothings’, as their sense of realism will prevail and they will deliver a good deal on Brexit.

Just as with so many who have studied economics, he can see no role for human folly in history. Unlike him I cannot consider the current generation of political leaders who have demonstrated serial incompetence in their roles, as the best people to be in charge when the country faces the existential threat that is Brexit. Can anybody really claim that any of our leading politicians have actually improved the performance of the departments in which they ran. The list of there failures is endless, transport, prisons, schools etc. This is why one minister has the unkind nickname of ‘failing Grayling’.In this government the good minister is the one that fails to made the department of which they are in charge worse.

However fairness demands that this journalist be judged as an economist. He bases his article on the claim that Mark Carney and the other expert economists got it wrong, when they said that Brexit would be bad for the economy. In his article he writes of several examples that demonstrate that the economy is sound and prospering, in spite of the referendum vote. Yet as an economist he should know that Mark Carney once the Brexit referendum was announced immediately pumped money into the economy to prevent the crash he warned against. This created cheap money and as interest rates were so low people borrowed to supplement their low incomes. Economic growth or what he terms prosperity has been founded on a rapid and unsound expansion of consumer borrowing. Such borrowing cannot continue for ever and the economy is rapidly coming to resemble that of 2008, when an over indebted economy crashed, with dire consequences for us all.

What this left wing journalist also fails to mention is inequality. The prosperity that he sees demonstrated in his local supermarket, excludes the millions on low pay. Those millions in the gig economy suffering the twin evils of low pay and insecure employment would have a very different view of the economy to his.

Possibility John Ford in his film ‘The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance’ had it correct, when his newspaper man confronted with an awkward truth, says it is better to print the myth than the truth. Similarly too many journalists prefer as does John Ford’s newspaperman to print the myth. In this case it is the myth of British exceptionalism.