Must-Read: Neil Irwin: Britain’s Economy Was Resilient After ‘Brexit.’ Its Leaders Learned the Wrong Lesson

Must-Read: Neil Irwin: Britain’s Economy Was Resilient After ‘Brexit.’ Its Leaders Learned the Wrong Lesson: “The British currency is plummeting again…

…The underlying reason is that the British government is ignoring the lessons from the relatively benign immediate aftermath of the vote…. The Brexit vote… set off a chaotic time of political disruption, especially the resignation of the prime minister, David Cameron…. Theresa May… is temperamentally pragmatic… [and] seemed like the kind of leader who would ensure that some of the worst-case possibilities of how Brexit might go wouldn’t materialize. Exporters would retain access to European markets. London could remain the de facto banking capital of Europe. All would be well. Meanwhile, the Bank of England… cut interest rates and started a new program of quantitative easing to try to soften the blow.

All of that… kept the economic damage mild, as the purchasing managers’ surveys show. But in the last couple of weeks… the May government has sent a range of signals indicating it will take a hard line in negotiations… begin[ning] the “Article 50” process… by the end of March, declaring that the government’s negotiators would insist that Britain… control… immigration…. European leaders will be reluctant to allow Britain continued free access to its markets… without similarly free movement of people…. And… the British government has signaled… [it] will be hostile to those who are not British citizens….. The confidence that Brexit will not mean Britain is shutting itself off from Europe and the world is starting to dissipate…. [And] after Mr. Carney helped foam the economic runway after the Brexit vote, Ms. May’s comments were the equivalent of complaining about the mess created by all that foam…