Mind you, the swings are fifty feet high, whereas you need a magnifying glass to spot the roundabouts.
Hot on the heels of yesterday’s news that GSK is investing £275m in itself to expand in the UK (note that GSK is worth over £80 billion – the investment is about 0.3% of that), and the Brexiters’ fanfares declaring how right they were all along about leaving the EU, the pendulum swung back the other way today as Lloyds Bank announced job losses and branch closures – citing the effects of Brexit as one of the reasons.
Lloyds was already in the middle of cutting 9,000 jobs and closing 200 branches, but it has announced a further 3,000 job cuts and a further 200 branch closures. Brexiters can only see Lloyds’ pre-tax profits, which were up 101% on last year, and their army of Internet trolls is consequently out in force against Lloyds. In reality, Lloyds’ underlying profits fell by 5%, and their CEO foresees a “deceleration of growth” as a result of Brexit.
So, in the space of a couple of days, we have an “investment” which may generate a few dozen jobs (ironically, most of them up in Scotland), and a much more significant loss of 3000 jobs at Lloyds.
And still the Brexiters think they were right.