Despite our patience, it has nevertheless still proved difficult to dig up much in the way of balanced commentary, with confirmation bias or establishment influence creeping into the thinking of even the most authoritative institutions. Even the political independence of the supposedly neutral Bank of England has been questioned, with governor Mark Carney’s predictions of a Brexit-induced recession stirring up a political storm – he defended himself by arguing that his view was a fair assessment of risks based purely on the facts. If so, could he please share them with the rest of us: facts have been a notably missing ingredient in much of the debate so far.
In his defence, he is in good company. Alongside dire prognoses from the CBI, OECD and others, the IMF under Christine Lagarde had already warned that in its view the outcome of Brexit would be at best “pretty bad” for Britain, and would lead to a stock market and house price crash (ignoring, of course, the policies that have inflated such asset prices in the first place). Scaremongering and spin have been the order of the day - in my view to the point where the warnings lack any credibility.
But I am veering into the realm of the political, which is something I steadfastly aim to avoid in editing this publication. Certainly, my own mind is far from made up – I am not an ideological or nationalistic zealot, and ready to change if the evidence changes. That said, I am always sceptical of the unfettered expansion the EU seems to engender – just as large businesses often suffer from so-called diseconomies of scale, so I believe that an increasingly powerful EU risks becoming even more wasteful and unmanageable than it already seems to be.
And as I read through our balanced coverage I am convinced that Britain’s standing in the world and its economic well-being will not be diminished should we leave. There are great people and great businesses here who will not want to relocate in the event of a Brexit, the doors will not be closed to talented migrants, and we speak a language of global commerce that is most certainly not confined to Europe.
The reality is, like so much in life and the microcosm of investing, we cannot possibly know what the future really has in store, or even what the past really means – individual interpretation of incomplete information can offer up many answers. Perhaps that’s why the Brexit debate has become so emotive – because its inevitable economic implications are so hard to pin down. But, just as we do in investing, we can at least make a better choice by taking the emotion out of the equation.
