Brexit has dealt a blow to UK investment according to MPC member

One of the external members of the Monetary Policy Committee, Jonathan Haskel, has estimated that Brexit has effectively imposed a productivity penalty equivalent to £29 billion on the UK economy. That's equivalent to £1,000 per household.

He is of the view that the Brexit vote in 2016 prompted a number of firms to halt their investment plans. The government response to this is suspiciously muted, with the Treasury even trying to claim that the UK has grown faster than its continental rivals post-Brexit.

Haskel, however, points at other factors that suggest that the performance of the UK economy differs from other European economies, not least with regard to the significant rise in economic inactivity since then.

More bad news for the UK economy as a whole, and car manufacturers more generally, with Ford cutting a fifth of its UK workforce at an R&D site in Essex.

Given other rumblings, most notably from Nissan, is this the death knell for the industry in the sector? You would hope not, but the sector looks pretty beleaguered and the fact that it's in R&S implies that we might be losing our competitiveness in the newest, possibly electric, models.

The latest labour market data reveals the entirely expected fact that though pay is rising, it's failing to keep pace with inflation and, at the moment, real pay is falling by 2.5% per annum.