As far as the economic consequences of the Brexit vote are concerned, the Bank of England has seen enough. Having held fire at its meeting in July in the immediate aftermath of the EU referendum, the Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee voted unanimously on 3 August to fire a three-barrelled stimulus bazooka.
I was not in the City that day but in the Lakes, holidaying with a brilliant scientist friend who is a director of the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI) in Cambridgeshire – one of the world’s leading centres for genomics research. I came away convinced that the true economic impact of Brexit has less to do with the short-term gyrations of interest rates and the financial markets and more to do with our long-term ability to maintain our position at the technological frontier. When it comes to Brexit, we should be worrying less about institutions such as the Bank and more about institutions such as the EBI.
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