To want Brexit be reversed

Again with "pro-EU" economists - were they pro our membership because it made financial sense to keep trade barriers with the EU to the minimum?
Economists studying the economic fall out - rather than political columnists.

It isn't difficult to say no to (non small boat) immigration . Now we have left the EU there is no right to free movement. The governments in power simply haven't had the will. If they don't find some motivation to reduce numbers right down they won't be in power again and we will have a reform government.

Yes tackling the boats is very difficult but they are not even doing the easy stuff. Perrhaps people would be more understanding of the difficulties of stopping the boats (while still expecting progress) if 900,000 other people (net) weren't being allowed in.

Edit to add: when people are actually fleeing danger e.g. the Ukraine war woman and children are well represented if not the majority. Remarkable that for people arriving on small boats the young men are "persecuted" and their women and children left behind. They are economic migrants else they wouldn't leave their families behind would they?

Another is that if you think that no economist should have been allowed to present a pro-Brexit view, which according to Maitlis is the logic of interviewing any EU-supporting economist, it would be an admission that no argument against EU membership can be tolerated at all.

No, that's not what she says. Her quote states very clearly that they had 60 times more luck finding pro EU economists than pro-Brexit ones. What she means is that it tells you something about the ratio of pro v anti in the economists community. But if you present a 1/60 ratio as 1/2 you are clearly biased. That's her point. It's not about allowing an opinion, it's about reflecting a fact (ie. that only 1 in 60 economists that they talked to was in favour of leave). Journalists should be about reporting facts, not opinion.

It isn't difficult to say no to (non small boat) immigration . Now we have left the EU there is no right to free movement. The governments in power simply haven't had the will. If they don't find some motivation to reduce numbers right down they won't be in power again and we will have a reform government.

Yes tackling the boats is very difficult but they are not even doing the easy stuff. Perrhaps people would be more understanding of the difficulties of stopping the boats (while still expecting progress) if 900,000 other people (net) weren't being allowed in.

Edit to add: when people are actually fleeing danger e.g. the Ukraine war woman and children are well represented if not the majority. Remarkable that for people arriving on small boats the young men are "persecuted" and their women and children left behind. They are economic migrants else they wouldn't leave their families behind would they?

Easy to decline them? Clearly not. Besides, what people are clamouring for the Government to decline are the people arriving illegally and being put up in hotels, not the people coming into the country legally, despite the latter being the vast majority. Asylum seekers may not be a majority of immigrants, but they are the ones being demonised and picked on and accused of not being genuine. It’s incredibly inconvenient that it’s expensive and time consuming working out what to do with people who claim to be fleeing persecution. And their numbers will only grow. The legal migrants, meanwhile, clearly come with benefits, or it wouldn’t be so difficult keeping those numbers down.

I understand that - I'm saying that economists were putting forward arguments about our economy and therefore shouldnt be viewed as making political commentary.
The fact that by far and away the majority of them thought it was a bad idea doesnt make them anti Brexit, just doing their jobs.

Anyone suggesting the UK was going to save £350 million a week as a result of leaving the EU was quite frankly lying.

And what does “single market” mean to most people? It’s just more words, like “European Union,” and means whatever people they want to listen to tell them it means. What people listened and responded to were what they were told the potential benefits of leaving the EU would be. People were told the single market meant straight bananas, and money going to bureaucrats to make unnecessary red tape rather than money being spent on the UK in the UK. They were told we didn’t need the EU because the UK was a country the world was clamouring to do business with and that the EU was just holding us back. They were told we were being ripped off by the EU. They were told that the remain campaign was just sticking with something inadequate due to cowardice and lack of vision. It’s easy to sell a fantasy. Reality is always harder to sell.

The economic consequences of leaving the EU absolutely had to be addressed. Even now, they should be seriously (re)assessed. So it was absolutely relevant to ask economists about the pros and cons of leaving the single market and customs unions.

you may have been a lone sensible voice in the wilderness. But the vast majority of remain voters were not.

And that is why you still occasionally hear the whinging cry of "why won't brexiteers engage with us?"

I'm not sure economists should be necessarily be bracketed as pro or anti EU.
Surely they would be putting forward economic arguments rather political ones.

Hmm... Now, see, this is something that people keep getting wrong...

The exact statement made on buses during the Brexit campaign was: "We send the EU £350 million a week, let's fund our NHS instead."

What is incorrect about that statement?
Surely it stands to reason that, if we're not sending the EU £350 million a week, then those funds could be available to put towards our NHS?

However, at no point did ANYONE categorically claim that: 'We WILL put the £350 million a week we're not sending the EU directly into the NHS'.

So anyone suggesting they did say this is, frankly, lying.

That's politically unsellable though

No it isn't. She is right. Some ideas are spectacularly shit and have to be treated as such. Doesn't mean you can't talk about them of course - but you should not over-represent the shit idea for the sake of a misconceived idea of balance.
Don't confuse opinions and facts. All opinions are equal but all facts are not.

I’m surprised Emily Maitlis said that.

It is a remarkably stupid statement.

Perhaps, but any deal will be an improvement on the no deal - or barely any deal- we currently have.

If we rejoined it wouldn’t be on as good a terms as it was before, the deal would not be as good I don’t think

I can’t read a Brexit thread without thinking of the Emily Maitless quote

“It might take our producers five minutes to find 60 economists who feared Brexit and five hours to find a sole voice who espoused it.
“But by the time we went on air we simply had one of each; we presented this unequal effort to our audience as balance. It wasn’t.”
She added: “I’d later learn that the ungainly name for this myopic style of journalism: ‘both-sideism’, which talks to the way it reaches a superficial balance while obscuring a deeper truth.”

We were absolutely screwed over!

To be fair, the NHS budget in England alone rose by £400 million a week in real terms between the referendum in 2016 and 2019/20, the year before Covid.

Ment to say the £350 million a week that would go to the NHS instead. Even printed it on a bus and the Brexit voters fell for it.