The latest MARKIT study of Britain’s export performance shows that….the growth is not being translated into export growth.
And the main failure is…..manufactured goods.
And the worst area is….the EU.

Every time this happens the ‘surprise’ word is used in some form or another. From today’s FT: ‘…weaker than expected in September.’ Nobody in Sloggers’ Roost was surprised; we had no expectations of these data at all.

I refuse to accept that everyone involved in monitoring UK economic performance for the Government is thick. Even in our civil service, this simply isn’t possible. One has to believe that, with all data like this, the belief that spin buys time is still alive and well.

I think this is obvious bollocks: thanks to exaggeration of the performances in previous months, the Opposition is now well placed to argue that everything was going swimmingly until the Coalition cuts came in and ruined everything.

There would be something in what they said: but nothing like as much as the Huttons are suggesting. You can’t cut government spending by 25-40% and NOT reduce consumer demand when 40+% of the population works for that government axis. But equally, you simply cannot continue functioning as a trading nation if nobody will lend you any more money: and the later you leave the cutbacks, the tighter the debt/output noose becomes. Ireland remains a lesson to us all.

Wittering on about how much smaller and further in debt Ireland is vis-a-vis the UK doesn’t change that point: Ireland is suffering now what we would have come up against by the end of 2012 had the Brownshirts been allowed to keep on as before. As I’ve written many times, eternal optimists are also eternally incapable of realising how acceleration in the loss of trust overwhelms every calm forecast.

This has been continuing for Ireland throughout today. Forced to nationalise Allied Irish, what was a 5 billion euro bailout is turning into ‘at least a 7billion euro cost’. The minimum cost is now 45 billion for all bailouts – up from 34 billion yesterday. Hedge funds are seriously targeting the country, and its output performance forecast has dropped yet again. Ollie Rehn – the clown only the day before yesterday saying Ireland’s ‘flexible’ workforce would sort everything out – now says taxes will also have to rise. This afternoon, Brian Lenihan confirmed this. That will depress output still further….on and on it goes, until Ireland hangs itself.

The need for Irish taxation increases is a direct result of the inability to raise further money from the markets. And that inability is a direct result of loss of trust caused by hiding reality and forecasting the impossible. This is precisely what Brown and Darling did throughout 2009: between them, they got 15 out of 21 economic forecasts wrong, and consistently underestimated the bailout costs from Spring 2008 onwards. If anyone thinks that the UK would be able to borrow on the spreads we can and with the relative ease we can today with those two in charge, then they must be deranged. But even what we’re borrowing now could turn into disaster if the output falls enough and the spreads rise because of that outlook. And the years out for the bonds will get shorter.

Britain still has the option to cut taxes and raise interest rates. Ireland doesn’t. The UK is a long way from turning the corner. Ireland is stuck in a corner with no way out. The Fluffies should try to get their heads round this: it is an inescapable mathematical logic.