Mrs May has robotically dissed the Peoples' Vote protests and continues to rattle on about completing the withdrawal agreement by the end of March. "All your base are belong to us," as the cats might say.
She computes that we are at 95% complete, which is a phrase well recognised by project managers.
What's the old saying? Oh yes, "The first 90% of a project takes 90% of the time available. The last 10% takes the other 90%."
Incredibly, it is already a year since those Maybot characters appeared around Westminster. It's so long that I've read and redistributed that John Crace Maybot book. I've decided it is time to take a look at investment exposure, because of the upsets coming over the next few months.
First some baselining with data from the Office of National Statistics. We'll start with exports and imports to the UK.
First, the UK imports around £580 billion of goods and services, of which about 54% comes from the EU, 41% from the Rest of the World and 4% from EFTA.
Understandably, trade between countries is driven by physical distance and size. The size of a partner economy matters, which is why we trade more with the US and China than smaller, closer economies.
Let's drill into the ONS numbers. Here's the EU imports to UK:
And here's the Rest of the World imports to UK:
Putting all the £4.5bn and above results into a pie chart, we can see the top 10 countries account for around 75% of the total.
Approximate top of the pops are Germany, USA, Netherlands, China, France, Spain, Belgium, Italy, Ireland, Poland, Japan.
Students of automata might venture that: "If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it's probably a duck."
Whether Mrs May has been programmed for Vaucanson could be a moot point? Selective reality could be a variant of virtual reality. Her cohort certainly know how to practice reality distortion, without even needing special screwdrivers.
Maybe the other trading direction is different? According to the ONS Pink book 2017, UK exports are around £548bn:
That's Rest of World 52% : EU 43%: EFTA 5%.
Notice the switch in the numbers, with Rest of World showing as a greater proportion?
UK already sells more by percentage to the Rest of World than to the EU, emphasised by UK's trade with the USA.
Skipping to the exports by country pie chart, it is something like this:
This time the top influences are USA, Germany, France, Netherlands, Ireland, Italy, Residual Gulf states, China, Belgium, Spain, Japan, Sweden. My chart below illustrates:
We know that the USA wants to do a trade deal with the UK after Brexit. Another truism: "If it sounds too good to be true, then it probably is too good to be true." I think robots have to be taught these things.
UK needs to be careful not to get a trumped-up deal from the USA, which could notice that UK exports 50% more to the USA than it imports. As for the other top few countries, several of them are EU-based. Germany, France, Netherlands, Ireland, Italy, Belgium, Spain, Sweden.
But current Brexit talks are about withdrawal, not about the new deals which will need to be struck and which, by Eurocrat definition, cannot be better than the deals UK currently has with the countries involved. Computer says no, as Dominic Raab might say.
It means that the plan that's 95% complete is only really for the first bit.
Yikes.
A fast idiot computer might react that the nice thing about not planning is that failure comes as a complete surprise, rather than being preceded by a period of worry and depression. But wait, the computer can neither worry nor be depressed.
My look at the numbers is to attempt to fathom the next market effects. Some will probably be right at the last moment just like they were after the referendum result.
On of the prior effects was the sudden dip in the GBP compared with other currencies, such as the US dollar values.
It settled at a 12.5% drop in the value of the GBP vs USD and Euro (i.e. pricing Brexit into exchange rates)
It's like a £64bn question. That's about the amount that the foreign exchange variation represents on a year's exports. Way more than a year's EU contribution from the UK. Of course, this change has worked through the economy now although, at least until recently, the stock markets have continued to move upward.
Today, the FTSE 100 is back into the 69xxs. Maybe it's also the loose talk of the conflicting end of austerity and new ways to raise tax.
I can understand that, for Brexit, investing in the FTSE 250 isn't such a bright idea because the companies in it are largely serving the British marketplace, with maximum exposure and potential for volatility. There's a rub in that too, with lower investment creating a self fulfilling prophesy of decline. It does not compute, as an automat may say.
The FTSE100, on the other hand, has the bigger more international companies within it. They should tough out a UK specific issue. But as even the FTSE 100 is now dropping it would seem to signal a wider malaise. The markets are usually separate from the politics, but the 95% project has become such a basket case that it is almost impossible for the markets to ignore the erratic behaviour.
Another one to teach the computer: When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.
These numbers are also where there's plenty of upscale vested interest. Onshore/offshore? Plenty of the big equity bets have already been placed. The Etonian moneyed won't want normal folks voices outside Westminster to interfere with their shed loads of money making schemes.
** Computer - find me a recent picture of a man with a shed **
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