When the world gets closer.

We help you see farther.

Sign up to our expressly international daily newsletter.

Already a subscriber? Log in.

You've reach your limit of free articles.

Get unlimited access to Worldcrunch

You can cancel anytime.

SUBSCRIBERS BENEFITS

Ad-free experience NEW

Exclusive international news coverage

Access to Worldcrunch archives

Monthly Access

30-day free trial, then $2.90 per month.

Annual Access BEST VALUE

$19.90 per year, save $14.90 compared to monthly billing.save $14.90.

Subscribe to Worldcrunch
Geopolitics

Looking Back At Brexit, A Decade From Now

Union Jack Is Back
Union Jack Is Back
Jean-Marc Vittori

PARIS — The two French visitors just couldn't get over it. "Why were you wrong again?" the elderly English lady asked them with a severe, inquisitive tone.

The woman, Queen Elizabeth II, should have had other things on her mind. It was April 21, 2026, after all, her 100th birthday, and the whole planet seemed to be celebrating the event. But the queen saw this as just another birthday. She knew she was supposed to spend the day at Windsor, go to mass, cut into a huge cake, put up with the shouts of her great-grandchildren, deafened, thankfully, by her gradual hearing loss.

What Elizabeth II really longed for, rather than the tiresome birthday routine, was an answer to a question that had been nagging her for a decade. That was the reason she had sent out tea invitations to the director of the Department of Economics at the prestigious London School of Economics (LSE), a young French woman, and to the director of the Paris School of Economics.

Prior to the meeting, the two economists were beside themselves with anxiety. Why, they wondered, did the centenarian want to see them? Now, sitting across from her, it started to make sense. "How could you have been wrong yet again?" the queen wanted to know.

The two economists remembered that she'd asked a similar question about two decades earlier, just after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, as she inaugurated a new building at the LSE. "Why did no one see it coming?" she had asked professor Luis Garicano, who led the school's Department of Management at the time. They didn't know the queen had only just begun taking a serious interest in economics.

Elizabeth II was just a child at the time of the Great Depression of the 1930s, but she'd been shocked by the Great Recession of 2009. She didn't mind much that her assets had lost one-quarter of their value. She still had plenty to live on. But the crisis had spelled disaster for some of her traditional suppliers, like the fashion designer Hardy Amies and the porcelain maker Royal Worcester.

"The British miracle"

She was understandably concerned, therefore, in the lead-up to the famous Brexit referendum of 2016. Hundreds of economists had predicted an economic apocalypse if voters decided to leave the European Union. The monarch had taken a costly insurance on her British assets, which represent most of her holdings. The then 90-year-old had also been worried sick for her subjects.


Queen Elizabeth II: Record-Breaking...by Worldcrunch

But it all turned out to be unnecessary. After a short and violent contraction in 2017-2018, the economy recovered resoundingly with a growth surge that was later dubbed "the British miracle."

Its five causes are now well-known: strong devaluation of the pound sterling, sustained relocalization of activities with the rise of 3D printing, rapid emergence of English biotech giants, touristic and agricultural boom thanks to the acceleration of climate change, and finally a new boom for the City of London, where the departure of a few activities towards the continent was insignificant compared to massive influx of U.S. financiers fed up with the tax burden inflicted upon them by the successive Clinton and Trump administrations.

Facing the silence of her two astonished guests, the queen reentered the fray. Already in 1992, she reminded them, economists had predicted the worst when her kingdom bucked the single currency trend, but the British economy actually came out of it all perked up. In 2008, when the worst happened, they had foreseen nothing. And in 2016, the doomsday warnings came again, for nothing.

"Are economists actually worse than weather forecasters?" she said, taunting them.

The two economic school directors turned as red as beets. They mumbled that budget savings after leaving the EU had been smaller than those promised by the Leave campaign, as most economists had predicted; that they personally hadn't been involved in the Stay campaign; and that they were not responsible for what their colleagues had said. They said that the issue of Scottish and Northern Irish independence was a matter of political science and not economics; that for years, their best researchers had been working on behavioral economics, economic history and innovation theory, not on improbable forecast models.

In the end, the aged monarch took pity on her French guests. She even thanked them for what economists had said a decade earlier, their predictions being so much anti-Brexit that they had actually helped sway the decision to leave. She also thought hard about those who had mistaken personal beliefs for professional work, and how ultimately, no economist could ever prove that the Brexit made things worse.

You've reached your limit of free articles.

To read the full story, start your free trial today.

Get unlimited access. Cancel anytime.

Exclusive coverage from the world's top sources, in English for the first time.

Insights from the widest range of perspectives, languages and countries.

Economy

Lex Tusk? How Poland’s Controversial "Russian Influence" Law Will Subvert Democracy

The new “lex Tusk” includes language about companies and their management. But is this likely to be a fair investigation into breaking sanctions on Russia, or a political witch-hunt in the business sphere?

Photo of President of the Republic of Poland Andrzej Duda

Polish President Andrzej Duda

Piotr Miaczynski, Leszek Kostrzewski

-Analysis-

WARSAW — Poland’s new Commission for investigating Russian influence, which President Andrzej Duda signed into law on Monday, will be able to summon representatives of any company for inquiry. It has sparked a major controversy in Polish politics, as political opponents of the government warn that the Commission has been given near absolute power to investigate and punish any citizen, business or organization.

And opposition politicians are expected to be high on the list of would-be suspects, starting with Donald Tusk, who is challenging the ruling PiS government to return to the presidency next fall. For that reason, it has been sardonically dubbed: Lex Tusk.

University of Warsaw law professor Michal Romanowski notes that the interests of any firm can be considered favorable to Russia. “These are instruments which the likes of Putin and Orban would not be ashamed of," Romanowski said.

The law on the Commission for examining Russian influences has "atomic" prerogatives sewn into it. Nine members of the Commission with the rank of secretary of state will be able to summon virtually anyone, with the powers of severe punishment.

Under the new law, these Commissioners will become arbiters of nearly absolute power, and will be able to use the resources of nearly any organ of the state, including the secret services, in order to demand access to every available document. They will be able to prosecute people for acts which were not prohibited at the time they were committed.

Their prerogatives are broader than that of the President or the Prime Minister, wider than those of any court. And there is virtually no oversight over their actions.

Nobody can feel safe. This includes companies, their management, lawyers, journalists, and trade unionists.

Keep reading...Show less

You've reached your limit of free articles.

To read the full story, start your free trial today.

Get unlimited access. Cancel anytime.

Exclusive coverage from the world's top sources, in English for the first time.

Insights from the widest range of perspectives, languages and countries.

Already a subscriber? Log in.

You've reach your limit of free articles.

Get unlimited access to Worldcrunch

You can cancel anytime.

SUBSCRIBERS BENEFITS

Ad-free experience NEW

Exclusive international news coverage

Access to Worldcrunch archives

Monthly Access

30-day free trial, then $2.90 per month.

Annual Access BEST VALUE

$19.90 per year, save $14.90 compared to monthly billing.save $14.90.

Subscribe to Worldcrunch

The latest