Amidst all the noise, the bookies are prepared to make a market in the Brexit date – here are the Betfair Exchange odds.
You can now get nearly 5/2 against Britain leaving the EU this year. It is more likely at 2/1 that it will happen next and only just over 3/1 that it won’t happen before 2022.
The odds against a Brexit this year have been lengthening every day for the past fortnight as details leak out of what the Government is planning for – rather than shouting about.
The cost of No Deal is now estimated to increase UK Borrowing this year to £100 bn this year, according to “fiscal referee” the IFS. The FT report that a no deal would cost UK business £15bn in red tape., – numbers it has from HMRC.
Did not expect this at all
In IFS pre-Budget analysis with investment bank Citi…
Corbyn-led labour government (ditch brexit) leaves Britain 5% better off than Johnson-led Conservative Govt (no deal) by 2022
5% = £110bn a year
https://t.co/RSLm3x72bU via @financialtimes
— Chris Giles (@ChrisGiles_) October 8, 2019
And yet we are still being persuaded by posters, road traffic signs and television adverts to prepare for a Brexit on 31st October.
Undoubtedly I have better things to do than prepare for a no-deal, even if there is a deal – my common sense tells me it will happen next year and not this. If we crash out of the EU without a deal on Halloween night it will be the biggest waste of money since the last transfer window, the greatest stitch up since the Bayeux Tapestry.
I don’t know why I’m writing this, or why you are reading this. We are now into a facrcical world so topsy turvy that the Queen of Hearts and the Mad Hatter would be welcomed as business as usual.
