Bloomberg's Hutton on Skepticism For Brexit Pollsters (Audio)

Platform at se i C dot com. Slash imagine SMP five hundred index advancing twelve points now to twelve, a gain of six tenths of one percent. Dal Jones Industrial average of one hundred and thirty three points, a gain of eight tenths of one percent. Nan Stack up thirty four, a gain of seven tenths of one percent. Stocks are advancing as Fed Chair Janet Yellen signals the economy is still strengthening enough to withstand gradual increases in borrowing costs,

despite recent signs of slower job growth. Tenure down four thirty seconds, zeal there one point seven, Gold up four thirty beyounced to twelve forty seven, a gain of four tenths of one percent. Crewed up one oh five of barrel forty nine sixty seven, a gain of two point two percent. I'm Charlie Pellett and that's a Bloomberg Business flash you're listening to taking start with Kathleen Fox on Bloomberg Radio. Brexit a vote for the citizens of the United Kingdom to decide if they want to stay in

the European Union or go. Latest polls over the weekend showing that all of a sudden, once again, the vote to leave the European Union seems to beginning some strength or is it? Is it polls or people really changing their minds again. Robert Hutton joins us now. He's Bloomberg News UK govern and Politics reporter. He's joining us from London. So, Robert, what did the latest polls show some of up for us? Well,

what they show is Leave ahead. We've had three online polls this morning, coming after some poles last week which also showed Leave ahead, and all of them put Leave ahead by margins as much as five percentage points. So on the face of it, they say Brittain is about to leave a European Union. That's on the face of it. But people like you who look very closely at polls, and some recent polls that misled us really in terms

of where a vote was going. Important votes over the last couple of years have there's a lot of doubts. Give our listeners an example of a recent example of the polls being so wrong. But the headline one is the general election of last year, when nobody predicted that the Conservatives would win a majority, and indeed they went on to you could have got very good odds against that the day of the election. That more thing that

took us all by surprise. Another one two years ago, less than two years ago, another referendum, this time on Scottish independence, and again about two weeks out you had a pole at this time just just one pole, that put Leave significantly ahead. There was an almighty panic, just like today, the pound dropped and then loan hold. Ten days or so later there was a ten point lead for for staying in the United Kingdom. So there are

there are reasons to doubt the reliability of poles. And we just had a year long inquiry into whether poles can be trusted and the answer slightly sadly was not. Really these problems are quite difficult to solve and we don't know that they're going to be sold for the referendum, So these these poles need to be taken with a big pinch of salt that they're all we have. Yeah, but in your story, your excellent story, Brexit polsters feel

pressure with uncertainty. Assured points out that there's there are important implications of the polls misleading the public, and one example you give is that it's very important for the Remain in the UK group to get young voters out to the polls. Yes, so, um so what did the pattern in Britain as in much of the rest of the world is that old people vote and young people

don't vote because young people are fectless. And the assumption with on on on good evidence is that in this election, old people are more likely to vote to leave the EU and young people are more likely to vote to stay in the EU. So there there. If you're if you're a Remain campaigner, you're desperately trying to trying to motivate young people to to go out and vote, which, like trying to get teenagers to do anything, is a bit of a thankless task. Um, and if you're, if you're.

The thing that the Leave campaigners have got on their side is that there are we we there are a few million people in this country who has one person said to me would walk across broken glass to vote to get Brittain out of the European Union. Now, whether that's enough, Um? Is it? Will? I'll tell you in three weeks. Yeah, it's it's it's it's upon us, isn't it? Um? When you look at uh, the the issues behind is

certainly Uh. One of the people who are against Brexit, and even people who are kind of on the sidelines are saying it's it's very difficult to predict with certainty what will happen. And in fact, the Bank of England has come under some criticism recently, including by a Princeton University professor that that saying making these predictions about how hard it will hit the UK economy are are wrong and kind of incendiary, that they're stepping overstepping abound because

you don't really know what will happen. Well, you don't know, and there's there's there's, there's there's sort of there's two criticisms. One one a fairer than the other. It is. The Treasury has issued some incredibly specific reports about what would happen in the short term and the long term if Britain left the EU with very precise numbers. Now they can't produce precise numbers and really nobody, nobody knows what's going to happen in the future. That these forecasts are

necessarily unreliable. That said, I can say that if I eat take every day for a year, I will probably be fatter at the end of it than if I don't take cake every day for a year. And that kind of what the Treasury would say in their own defense is that that kind of forecasting of if we do this, if we leave the EU, they would say, we are more likely to lose inward investment. It's going to create a lot of uncertainty for businesses that are

already putting off spending decisions. Some multinational companies have said they'd move people into the EU. So from that point of view, can say all of that would probably slow the economy, and to some extent even the Leave campaign has acknowledged that they would. It can't get away from fact that there would be short term uncertainty when you don't know what it would look like, so there would

be short have certain leave. The campaigners will say, well, in the long term, you know, being tied to the U is not a good thing to be tied to. This is a ship that's sinking. That's that's the leave argument. Well, one of the more compelling arguments seems to me is what this would do to the City of London, potentially the financial district that is so important to the UK, to Europe, really to the world that that uh with a Brexit vote could definitely mean that the city is

no longer the center and certain companies would leave. In fact, I think I saw an estimate that what thirty four thousand or thirty eight thousand jobs at least would be at risk. I've seen higher estimates from that. But Jamie had Jamie di'm in here last week saying, um, if if Britain votes to leave, he's telling his staff, you know, do what you do, what you want. But if Britain votes leave, you should know that we would be moving

people into the European Union from here now. And there's a whole bunch of Euro denominated trades that currently take place through the City of London, and the very interesting question as to whether that could continue if Britain were outside, not just outside the European Single Currency as it is at the moment, but actually outside the European Union. There's

a strong argument it wouldn't. I did. On the other hand, here one person said to me last week, he said, well, look, the thing about the thing about the city is American bankers want to live in London and their wives want to live in Nonder, their husbands want to live in London. They want to bring their children up in London. They don't want to live in Frankfurt, they don't want to live in Europe. They would find a way, they said, they would find a way somehow to continue doing these

things from from London. But again that's uncertainty. We can suspect that. We don't know that, and that is the remain big argument is it's a terrible, terrible risk you're thinking of taking. So what does this mean? I mean, this seems to be so crucial for David Cameron. Oh yes, goodness, yes,

I mean. The funny thing about this debate is, in a way is that it's consistently looking at polling the British people are not very exercised about European Union membership, but a very small number of people are extremely concerned about it, and all of them are Conservative members of Parliament, and they forced Cameron in the last Parliament to promise this referendum, and effectively, in the end Cameron sort of said, okay, look, you can have the referendum and I will show you

that nobody in the country cares about this thing that you think is the most important thing in the world. And he has effectively enlisted the entire British public to prove a point to his party. And the great danger is that he won't do that. If Britain votes sixty forty to stay in, then he can really turn around and tell him to get lost. But if it's very close or return to the Britain votes to leave, Cameron

Cameron will have been proved wrong. If Britain votes to leave, David Cameron, who does not want Britain to leave the European Union, will effectively have suffered the biggest foreign policy defeat for a prime minister, arguably since the SUS War sus Crisis, which you may not be a big deal in America, but that's generally the sort of a benchmark for total foreign policy disasters in British politics. Well, that

is that about sums it up, Robert Hutton. If you're a betting man, how do you how do you bet the vocals on I would still bet with Remain, but I'm I'm getting increasingly doubtful about that. Well, we're gonna look forward to talking to you again soon. There's the floss that we get. I think the more exciting there's a vote on Brexit, on the UK leaving European Union or staying more excited gets. Robert Hutton is the UK

Government and politics reporter at Bloomberg News in London. Programming note the next two days Taking Stock will be live in Orlando Pershing Insight sixteen two thousand plus investment professionals from all over the world. This is Bloomberg Radio