'Get over it Remoaners' - Warnings of 'economic ARMAGEDDON after Brexit profoundly wrong'
WARNINGS by Remoaners that the UK would face “economic Armageddon” after Brexit are “profoundly wrong” and they need to “get over themselves”, one of Britain’s leading fund managers has declared.
Neil Woodford, the founding partner of Woodford Investment Management, compared worries over the Brexit referendum to overblown concerns about the millennium computer bug.
The legendary investor also criticised the Financial Times’ Brexit coverage in an interview he did with the pro-Remain paper.
Mr Woodford told the Financial Times: “I’ve rarely witnessed such an overwhelming consensus view – which I believe to be profoundly wrong – that the UK economy is going to hell in a handcart.
“And I think your own paper has gone a little bit mad, actually.
“People have become so extreme in their view that Brexit is a pre-determined disaster for the UK economy, that the share prices are discounting literally economic Armageddon for the UK economy.”
When asked which way he voted in the referendum, Mr Woodford said: “Put it this way, I think I would have been a happier, less stressed fund manager if we’d voted to stay.
“But we didn’t. And as a country, we just need to get over it. And the Remoaners need to get over themselves.”
He added: “It is a big liquid UK-focused bank whose fortunes pivot on the relative health, or the absolute health, of the UK economy.
“What the share price is expressing is a consensual view that the UK economy is going to hell in a handcart. Definitely, absolutely, without a doubt.
“I’m not saying that it won’t be disruptive. But this notion of a cliff-edge event for the UK economy, where unemployment rises massively, consumer and business confidence evaporates and companies desert the UK is just not how the real world works.”
Last month, Mr Woodford, who looks after more than £10billion of British savers’ money, also dismissed fears that a so-called “cliff-edge” Brexit would derail the economy.
According to a report he commissioned, falling back on World Trade Organisation rules if no deal is reached would “not have severe consequences” for British exports.
The report suggested a hard Brexit would see economic growth slow to 0.8 per cent in 2019 as “negative headwinds” buffet in the UK.
But, it found there will be no recession and added by 2027 output would be 1.1 per cent higher than it would have been if the UK stayed in the bloc.
He stressed the fall in the value of the pound and the “diminishing importance of Europe” has seen its share of world gross domestic product decline from 27 per cent to 17 per cent since 1990.
The report came after the chief executive of Sainsbury’s Mike Coupe said the UK is “probably through the worst” of a weaker pound and food inflation.