Brexit

When admitting failure is progress

“The [economics] profession is to some degree in crisis,” says the Bank of England’s chief economist Andy Haldane - but at least he's admitting it

Wednesday 11 January 2017 at 13:54

Difficult predictions
Difficult predictions Photo: Getty Images

Wait for long enough and the doomsayers’ predictions about Brexit may either come true or be forgotten. The Bank of England’s chief economist, Andy Haldane, broke ranks, however, admitting on Thursday that the Bank got its short-term assessment of the impact wrong.

Haldane said the Bank had had a “Michael Fish moment” – in reference to the BBC television “weather-man” who dismissed forecasts of what turned out to be the UK’s devastating storms of October 1987.  More heretically, Haldane indicated that economics “is to some degree in crisis”.