Here's what Nigel Farage is up to this weekend.

[RobinInTheCrabApple]

Nigel Farage is flying more than 3,000 miles to speak at a pro-Trump U.S. think tank.

For around 12 hours’ work this Saturday the Reform UK leader is expected to collect £27,856.88 from the Club for Growth, a Washington-based anti-tax lobby group that has pledged to work closely with Donald Trump ahead of the 2026 U.S. midterms.

This group helped raise £120m for Republican candidates in the 2024 election.

So while people in Clacton deal with rising costs, poverty and cuts Farage is being paid the equivalent of many people’s yearly salary to give a single speech in America.

GDP, employment, investment and productivity all lower since Brexit.

If that makes you happy then crack on.

Ever heard of “conflicts of interest”?

Being obsessed with bending the knee to the EU when the UK public voted to Leave springs to mind.

I guess certain people must be better off. Just not your average voter.

I hear someone is £5m better off!

Well boats crossings increased as a result of Brexit and decreased as a result of Starmer-
Why isn't he talking about that? It's almost as if he's stoking fear to garner support and not really interested in the things he's talking about. Which by the way everyone else is also talking about just without the stoking fear bit

Labour and Tories started tweaking visa rules to head off the Reform "threat".

Isn't that more to do with having the highest electricity prices in the developed world?
We also have one of the highest tax burdens and do not incentivise investment.

Nope. All attributed to Brexit.

… by the end of 2025 Brexit had reduced UK GDP by 6% to 8%, with the impact accumulating steadily over time. We estimate that investment was reduced by 12% to 13%, employment by 3% to 4% and productivity by 3% to 4%. These negative impacts reflect a combination of elevated uncertainty, reduced demand, diverted management time, and increased misallocation of resources from a protracted Brexit process.

https://www.nber.org/papers/w34459

ukandeu.ac.uk/brexits-impact-on-the-uk-economy/

I have heard tell you can prove anything with facts ?

Clearly not facts though - it's an estimate based on modelling;

BBC
'the study analysed lost growth by trying to reconstruct how the UK would have grown if it had not voted to leave the EU...'

'Some policy economists have argued that it is difficult to model how much the UK would have grown without Brexit, and that such studies overstate Brexit's impact, especially at a time of so many global crises.'

Well boats crossings increased as a result of Brexit

Looking at the EU's graph - why did the EU also have a massive increase in the number of asylum applications?

https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Asylum_applications_-_annual_statistics

The NBER is the USA's leading nonprofit economic research organization. Twelve of the 31 American Nobel Prize winners in Economics and three of the past Chairmen of the President's Council of Economic Advisers have been researchers at the NBER. The more than 600 professors of economics and business now teaching at universities around the country who are NBER researchers are the leading scholars in their fields. These Bureau associates concentrate on four types of empirical research: developing new statistical measurements, estimating quantitative models of economic behavior, assessing the effects of public policies on the U.S. economy, and projecting the effects of alternative policy proposals.

From the IFS.

Strangely the UK has grown on an average of 1.5% over the last 10 years, France 1.16. Germany 1.03%. But hay don't let facts get in your way

Only one of the has to be a remainer or a foreigner for Clav to dismiss it.

Still waiting for those elusive studies that prove Brexit was a success (apart from Jessop)

The best they can put forward is It wasn't that bad.

Or it isn't a proper Brexit

A note on the research paper states;

NBER working papers are circulated for discussion and comment purposes. They have not been peer-reviewed or been subject to the review by the NBER Board of Directors that accompanies official NBER publications.

The more than 600 professors of economics and business now teaching at universities around the country who are NBER researchers are the leading scholars in their fields.

Only one of the six co-authors appears to be currently associated with the NBER .

Who is obsessed?

Farage took a bribe from a foreign crypto baron. That's different from getting paid for a job. That is an elected official taking a bribe (I know he wasn't elected when he took the bribe but he clearly hid the bribe, lied about it repeatedly and changed his course of action and policies quickly following getting bribed. You're being wilfully obtuse if you ignore this.

Certainly not the one they voted for.

Which was definitely a crystal clear Brexit when they voted for it.

Boats! Boats, innit.
That's all he's got.
Got to keep everyone riled up to keep himself in.

They voted either remain or leave, that was the simple vote. They got exactly what they wanted.

Boat crossing are down, so what will be the next target?

A lot of supporters are in delusional mode and laugh reacting under everything on FB at the moment where it's mentioned.
Even if numbers are down, they'll never believe it.. So they'll probably keep wanging on about boats and it'll still work 😕