How bad will Brexit really be for the UK?

Long-term forecasts claiming that leaving the EU with no deal on trade would be economically disastrous undermine the UK's optimal negotiating strategy, writes Graham Gudgin (Policy Exchange). He points out significant flaws in such forecasts and shows why the estimates they table cannot be accepted as accurate. The great majority of the economic forecasts have concluded that Brexit will damage the ..

Behind the cube rule: implications of and evidence against a fractal electoral geography

An earlier version of this paper was issued as Discussion Papers in Economics, 01/03. The definitive, peer-reviewed and edited version of this article is published in Environment and Planning A, August 2003 35(8) p. 1405-1414In 1909 Parker Smith showed that the ratio of seats won by the two major parties in Britain was close to the cube of the ratio of their votes. Taagepera and Shugart argue, wrongly, that a fractal electoral map implies this. In fact their premises imply that the seats’ ratio will be the votes’ ratio to the power of , not 3. However, in the six countries we examine, the figure is between 2 and 3. This implies that the electoral map is nonfractal, political allegiances becoming less ‘clustered’ as you move from a macro to a micro scale. Taking the U.K., we ask if this is due to the geographical pattern of income distribution, and find that this is even further away from fractality than is voting. This fits the well known ‘neighborhood effect’ whereby poor (rich) people in rich (poor) constituencies vote as if richer (poorer) than they really are

How Are We Doing on Brexit?

Understandably we have heard little recently from Remainers or the second referendum brigade. As the football fans chant “they’ve all gone quiet over there”. Right from 10pm on election night when an accurate forecast announced Boris Johnson’s stunning victory the opponents of Brexit have been too shocked to say much

Will the Virus Blow Brexit Off-Course?

Rumours that the Brexit trade negotiations will stall and ending the Transition may be delayed have accompanied escalation in the virus crisis. This article reviews the evidence on the progression of the virus and its economic consequences and concludes with hope that a return to normality in the second half of the year will allow Brexit negotiations to proceed on-course

Brexit: A Story of Tall Stories

A recent, rather polite, public debate on Brexit brought several issues to the fore. Professor Robert Tombs a highly respected Cambridge University historian, argued initially in the Financial Times that Project Fear ‘talked up disaster flamboyantly’

When Can We Get Back to Work?

Much attention is currently focussed on when the lockdown can be ended, the economy returned to normality and the UK to leave the transition as planned. This article assesses the evidence and suggests mid-May as a possible date to begin a return to normality

Acute myeloid leukemia: leukemia stem cells write a prognostic signature

In a recent interesting article, analysis of gene expression between phenotypically defined acute myeloid leukemia (AML) leukemia stem cells (LSCs) and more mature leukemia progenitor cells is used to generate a differentially expressed gene signature for LSCs. Through clever bioinformatic weighting analysis, the authors describe a method to convert this signature into a single score for any given sample and then test the prognostic utility of this 'LSC score' in publicly available gene expression profiles from bulk AML samples. They demonstrate that a high LSC score is associated with poor prognosis in AML patients and further demonstrate that the score is independent of known prognostic factors, including age, karyotype and mutation of the FLT3 or NPM1 genes. These findings are important and directly relate transcriptional dysregulation in AML LSCs with the outcome in patient samples, thus reinforcing the belief that these cellular populations are crucial for the initial propagation and subsequent relapse and resistance of leukemia

Electoral bias at the 2015 general election: reducing Labour’s electoral advantage

Electoral bias results in an asymmetrical seat distribution between parties with similar vote shares. Over recent British general elections Labour held an advantage because it efficiently converted votes into seats. Following the 2015 election result this advantage has reduced considerably, principally because Labour’s vote distribution saw it accumulate more ineffective votes, particularly where electoral support was not converted into seats. By contrast, the vote distribution of the Conservative party is now superior to that of Labour because it acquired fewer wasted votes although Labour retains a modest advantage overall because it benefits from inequalities in electorate size and differences in voter turnout. Features of the 2015 election, however, raise general methodological challenges for decomposing electoral bias. The analysis, therefore, considers the effect of substituting the Liberal Democrats as the third party with the United Kingdom Independence Party. It also examines the outcome in Scotland separately from that in England and Wales. Following this analysis it becomes clear that the method for decomposing electoral bias requires clearer guidelines for its application in specific settings

The NI Protocol. Fraying at the Edges or Beginning to Collapse?

The signs are not good for the EU on the Northern Ireland Protocol. Collapse is in the air but of course the EU wants to maintain an evolving fiction that the UK’s legal obligations will be fully realized once a few tweaks are negotiated to make trade flow more easily across the Irish Sea border. Meanwhile, the UK has been on a ‘go slow’ in implementing the Protocol ever since it came into force at the start of 2021. A unilateral grace period was imposed by Lord Frost to suspend EU checks of food products and a ban on imports of chilled meat. The EU took legal action but with not much to gain in practice little has subsequently been heard of the legal case. Further grace periods were agreed by the EU in mid-2021 to avoid the threat of further unilateral action