Brexit update - pivotal 3 weeks coming up
10-12-2019
PropertyInvesting.net team
Progress Finally Being Made: After a rather catastrophic end September period Boris Johnson and the Tory party seem to be making better progress with it being slightly less likely Jeremy Corbyn will get into power.
Tory Party Conference Bounce: Firstly all of the Boris bluster and seeming mishaps don’t seem to have had any material impact on voting intensions. In fact, he go a bit of a bounce after the Tory party conference unlike Jeremy Corbyn. It still looks like are on Tories on 34%, Labour 24%, Lib-Dems 18%, Brexit 12%. If this stayed the same, then the Tories would likely win a majority.
Breakthrough on N Ireland: On 11 October Johnson seems to have made something of a breakthrough with the Irish PM on North Ireland and progress is now being made with talks in Brussel. Okay, we are nowhere near a deal, but at least that chance of a deal have risen. He may be forced to keep Northern Ireland in the customs union – something that would be deeply unpopular for his minority government ally the DUP party.
Will Parliament Vote for a Deal: Moving forwards, on Saturday 19 October Parliament will sit on a crucial day when events will unfold and an election could be called or agreed. Johnson is desperately trying to get the UK out of the EU by 31 October – either with or without a deal – so he can then destroy the Brexit party, grab most of their votes then comfortably defeat the Labour party in an election. Meanwhile Corbyn of course is trying to do exactly the opposite – he wants all the games to continue to make the Tories look as foolish as possible, frustrate the will of the people and himself decide which way the UK will go – and he has the cheek to call this democracy. At every conceivable stage in the Brexit process, he has frustrated the Tories regardless of his policies, values and views. Most people realise Corbyn wants out of the EU as well, but he’s more interested in power than Brexit. Because of this, even if a super deal was tabled 20 October, I doubt Corbyn would instruct his Labour MPs to vote for it – hence its likely to be defeated again, a real shame for the UK as a nation and the 17.2 million people including many Labour votes that voted for Brexit.
Exit on Halloween: Johnson says he will not break the law and yet come out of the EU regardless on 31 October. What he is probably saying is that he believes the Benn Act can be worked around legally. He might even persuade Hungary, France or another country to veto an extension if he did indeed ask for one. He also may have no intension of writing a letter asking for an extension. We don’t know for sure, but we should take him seriously when he says he will come out on 31 October. If he is forced to write a letter, then go for an election, then he will of course blame the lack of Brexit on Corbyn and the Labour and Lib-Dem parties.
Tory Strategy: The Tory strategy is to swing to the right to capture Brexit voters, whilst giving some populist policies like funding the National Health Service and more police to capture Labour Brexit voters – mainly in the Midlands and North of England. He will campaign to say Labour and other Parliamentary MPs have frustrated the will of the people – and they instead should vote Tory for Johnson so he can properly lead the country forwards. This strategy might well win – against Labour’s flip-flopping, frustrating, protesting along with some very unsavoury anti-sematic behaviours and being in denial about this issue.
Policies have Been Bad for Buy-Let-Let Investors: For property investors, the Tory party has actually done a lot of damage to buy-to-let investors with draconian tax increases on borrowed debt, more regulations and promises of increases in tenant’s rights. Many new laws have made making a profit very difficult. On the other hand the UK economy has being doing well under their steady financial management that has kept down interest rates, boosted growth/employment and reduced borrowing. But we have to be frank and say it would be a whole lot worse, very much worse, under either a Labour government or a Labour – Lib-Dem Coalition. Labour would target Landlord even worse than the Bankers were targeted in 2009. The housing crisis will be blamed on private landlord – without a shadow of doubt – as soon as Labour got into power.
Labour Get Into Power: If Labour get into power we would – absolutely no doubt – see:
• Labour trying to get a “Right to Buy” for tenants at below market prices – this in our view is state sponsored property appropriation. This is the state forcing the sale of privately held property. It makes a mockery of property law and private enterprise. This is Marxism and Communism. This is what the Labour government are all about. This is what they stand for – seizing private property.
• They will also allow tenants the right to stay in rented properties – equivalent to sitting tenants.
• They will seize empty commercial properties and give them to charities or councils
• Rent controls and caps will be implemented – so market rental rates cannot be charged – so called rent caps
• They will seize land that is not used – and pass to councils for building or public use
• They will engineer a property price crash with the view to allowing less well off people to buy properties – but their won’t be any banks around to lend money by then.
• As far as the overall economy is concerned – the following would happen:
• Massive increase in public sector spending would rapidly drive up the deficit from around 90% of GDP to well over 120% of GDP – in effect bankrupting the nation
• The spending would need to be paid for by printing Sterling currency – so Sterling would “tank” in value – this would increase general inflation and lead to escalating costs of imported goods and services
• The drop in the currency value would lead to increases in oil, petrol, gas and energy prices – since this is prices in dollars and most of UK’s gas supplies are imported now (in significant part caused by Gordon Brown’s draconian North Sea tax increases leading to lower North Sea investments in period 2003-2010 and a crash in gas production during his tenure).
• The number of public sector jobs would increase, the number of private sector jobs would decrease – tax revenues would decrease since businesses and confidence will suffer
• After a few years unemployment would start to sky-rocket – also because of high social security pay-out and less incentive for people to work – more people would “opt out” of work and go on benefits instead
• Many large businesses and financial services – plus many super-rich people would leave the UK and set up overseas because of increases in taxes and punitive taxes on the rich compared with other European and global countries.
• The economy would tip into recession after the “money ran out” and confidence dipped – which would be pretty rapidly.
• House prices would crash, particularly in London and southern England where the is a higher proportion of wealthy people and high private/public sector workforce.
Marxists Running the UK: If the process continued for a second Labour 4 year term – the UK would start to go the way of Venezuela heading in to hyper-inflation and a populist socialist autocratic model with increasing violence and lawlessness. We have to stress that Corby, McDonnell and Watson are all ultra-left wing extremists – they are the ones running the Labour party and would set policy. They are Marxist in values and philosophy and would try and nationalise as much as possible to – in their view – reverse decades of capitalism and business enterprise. After 4 years the UK would look a very different place. There would be less immigration – largely because of the collapse in the currency – European mainland workers would find it far less attractive to work in the UK and there would also be less private sector employment opportunities.
Green Bandwagon: Labour have jumped on the Green bandwagon to try and capture as many young and women’s votes as possible – something they might success in. And their populist ultra-left wing policies might see enough of the disadvantage populations, minorities and younger people come out to vote for them – they will promise the earth and another chance to reverse Brexit. They also try to capture workers and women’s right votes. The younger votes will not remember or know of the devastation that previous fast spending Labour governments caused – including strikes, 3 day weeks and rubbish not being collected in 1973 for instance. They wont have read the history books. In addition, everyone will have forgotten about the anti-Semitism.
Labour and Economic Chaos: But if they get into power it will end in economic chaos on a grand scale – and we are of course deeply worried. It would also more than likely lead to the UK staying the EU and Brussels taking over more and more of our laws and regulations – that big unelected Euro elite appointees telling the British how to run the country. The UK would become overnight by far the most left-wing state in Europe – and the ironic thing is that it would be Farage re-appearing under the Brexit party banner taking the Tory votes that would put Labour into power – and also triggering another EU Referendum – by undermining Boris Johnson and the Tories. What a disaster (chart on left is from 2 Oct 2019).
Pivotal Period: The next three weeks are going to be pivotal for the UK for many years. In summary, if the Tories get a majority and we exit the EU – there is likely to be a property boom particularly in London. But if Labour get into power regardless of whether we exist of stay in the EU – property prices will crash in real terms, along with the currency with general inflation rising sharply along with interest rates.
Don’t Invest Just Yet: For now – its not a good time to be making any investment decisions or going long on property – because the threat of a Labour government is such a real prospect – the nightmare starting 31 October of Corby being No 10 by Christmas.
We will send our next Special Report on Sunday 20 October – immediately after the pivotal parliamentary day of 19 Oct – to keep you posted. We hope this Special Report has given some pointers to your investment risks and options during these uncertain times. If you have any comments or queries, please contact us on
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