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

0:00:02.440 --> 0:00:05.800
<v Speaker 1>Global business news twenty four hours a day. If Bloomberg

0:00:05.880 --> 0:00:08.960
<v Speaker 1>dot com the radio plus Globile lact and on your radio.

0:00:09.240 --> 0:00:13.640
<v Speaker 1>This is a Bloomberg Business Flash from Bloomberg World Handquarters.

0:00:13.680 --> 0:00:17.360
<v Speaker 1>I'm Charlie Plot, the DAL, the SMP, NEZDAK, They're all climbing.

0:00:17.520 --> 0:00:20.960
<v Speaker 1>SMP five hundred index on track for eight ten month

0:00:21.040 --> 0:00:23.520
<v Speaker 1>high and we are brought to you by s C.

0:00:23.720 --> 0:00:28.240
<v Speaker 1>I have evolving investor and regulatory demands affected your investment

0:00:28.280 --> 0:00:34.360
<v Speaker 1>firms operational readiness. Imagine transforming your business with SEIS Global

0:00:34.400 --> 0:00:39.400
<v Speaker 1>Platform at se i C dot com. Slash imagine SMP

0:00:39.520 --> 0:00:43.680
<v Speaker 1>five hundred index advancing twelve points now to twelve, a

0:00:43.680 --> 0:00:46.879
<v Speaker 1>gain of six tenths of one percent. Dal Jones Industrial

0:00:46.920 --> 0:00:49.760
<v Speaker 1>average of one hundred and thirty three points, a gain

0:00:49.800 --> 0:00:52.720
<v Speaker 1>of eight tenths of one percent. Nan Stack up thirty four,

0:00:52.720 --> 0:00:55.480
<v Speaker 1>a gain of seven tenths of one percent. Stocks are

0:00:55.520 --> 0:00:58.920
<v Speaker 1>advancing as Fed Chair Janet Yellen signals the economy is

0:00:59.000 --> 0:01:03.520
<v Speaker 1>still strengthening enough to withstand gradual increases in borrowing costs,

0:01:03.520 --> 0:01:07.440
<v Speaker 1>despite recent signs of slower job growth. Tenure down four

0:01:07.520 --> 0:01:11.440
<v Speaker 1>thirty seconds, zeal there one point seven, Gold up four

0:01:11.520 --> 0:01:13.959
<v Speaker 1>thirty beyounced to twelve forty seven, a gain of four

0:01:14.040 --> 0:01:17.080
<v Speaker 1>tenths of one percent. Crewed up one oh five of

0:01:17.160 --> 0:01:20.000
<v Speaker 1>barrel forty nine sixty seven, a gain of two point

0:01:20.080 --> 0:01:24.040
<v Speaker 1>two percent. I'm Charlie Pellett and that's a Bloomberg Business

0:01:24.040 --> 0:01:30.520
<v Speaker 1>flash you're listening to taking start with Kathleen Fox on

0:01:30.560 --> 0:01:36.280
<v Speaker 1>Bloomberg Radio. Brexit a vote for the citizens of the

0:01:36.360 --> 0:01:39.560
<v Speaker 1>United Kingdom to decide if they want to stay in

0:01:39.600 --> 0:01:43.759
<v Speaker 1>the European Union or go. Latest polls over the weekend

0:01:43.840 --> 0:01:47.040
<v Speaker 1>showing that all of a sudden, once again, the vote

0:01:47.440 --> 0:01:52.640
<v Speaker 1>to leave the European Union seems to beginning some strength

0:01:52.800 --> 0:01:55.560
<v Speaker 1>or is it? Is it polls or people really changing

0:01:55.600 --> 0:01:59.040
<v Speaker 1>their minds again. Robert Hutton joins us now. He's Bloomberg

0:01:59.120 --> 0:02:04.800
<v Speaker 1>News UK govern and Politics reporter. He's joining us from London. So, Robert,

0:02:04.840 --> 0:02:08.160
<v Speaker 1>what did the latest polls show some of up for us? Well,

0:02:08.200 --> 0:02:11.600
<v Speaker 1>what they show is Leave ahead. We've had three online

0:02:11.600 --> 0:02:14.799
<v Speaker 1>polls this morning, coming after some poles last week which

0:02:14.840 --> 0:02:17.799
<v Speaker 1>also showed Leave ahead, and all of them put Leave

0:02:17.840 --> 0:02:21.919
<v Speaker 1>ahead by margins as much as five percentage points. So

0:02:22.040 --> 0:02:24.280
<v Speaker 1>on the face of it, they say Brittain is about

0:02:24.280 --> 0:02:27.200
<v Speaker 1>to leave a European Union. That's on the face of it.

0:02:27.280 --> 0:02:30.600
<v Speaker 1>But people like you who look very closely at polls,

0:02:30.639 --> 0:02:35.560
<v Speaker 1>and some recent polls that misled us really in terms

0:02:35.639 --> 0:02:38.320
<v Speaker 1>of where a vote was going. Important votes over the

0:02:38.400 --> 0:02:40.799
<v Speaker 1>last couple of years have there's a lot of doubts.

0:02:40.800 --> 0:02:45.359
<v Speaker 1>Give our listeners an example of a recent example of

0:02:45.520 --> 0:02:48.840
<v Speaker 1>the polls being so wrong. But the headline one is

0:02:48.960 --> 0:02:52.519
<v Speaker 1>the general election of last year, when nobody predicted that

0:02:52.560 --> 0:02:56.000
<v Speaker 1>the Conservatives would win a majority, and indeed they went

0:02:56.040 --> 0:02:57.960
<v Speaker 1>on to you could have got very good odds against

0:02:58.000 --> 0:03:01.200
<v Speaker 1>that the day of the election. That more thing that

0:03:01.280 --> 0:03:03.880
<v Speaker 1>took us all by surprise. Another one two years ago,

0:03:03.960 --> 0:03:06.799
<v Speaker 1>less than two years ago, another referendum, this time on

0:03:06.840 --> 0:03:10.040
<v Speaker 1>Scottish independence, and again about two weeks out you had

0:03:10.040 --> 0:03:12.200
<v Speaker 1>a pole at this time just just one pole, that

0:03:12.320 --> 0:03:17.120
<v Speaker 1>put Leave significantly ahead. There was an almighty panic, just

0:03:17.240 --> 0:03:21.880
<v Speaker 1>like today, the pound dropped and then loan hold. Ten

0:03:21.960 --> 0:03:24.560
<v Speaker 1>days or so later there was a ten point lead

0:03:24.560 --> 0:03:27.760
<v Speaker 1>for for staying in the United Kingdom. So there are

0:03:27.840 --> 0:03:31.919
<v Speaker 1>there are reasons to doubt the reliability of poles. And

0:03:32.360 --> 0:03:35.000
<v Speaker 1>we just had a year long inquiry into whether poles

0:03:35.040 --> 0:03:38.920
<v Speaker 1>can be trusted and the answer slightly sadly was not.

0:03:38.960 --> 0:03:42.160
<v Speaker 1>Really these problems are quite difficult to solve and we

0:03:42.200 --> 0:03:44.360
<v Speaker 1>don't know that they're going to be sold for the referendum,

0:03:44.440 --> 0:03:46.680
<v Speaker 1>So these these poles need to be taken with a

0:03:46.720 --> 0:03:50.000
<v Speaker 1>big pinch of salt that they're all we have. Yeah,

0:03:50.000 --> 0:03:54.520
<v Speaker 1>but in your story, your excellent story, Brexit polsters feel

0:03:54.600 --> 0:04:00.000
<v Speaker 1>pressure with uncertainty. Assured points out that there's there are

0:04:00.280 --> 0:04:05.280
<v Speaker 1>important implications of the polls misleading the public, and one

0:04:05.280 --> 0:04:08.600
<v Speaker 1>example you give is that it's very important for the

0:04:08.720 --> 0:04:13.760
<v Speaker 1>Remain in the UK group to get young voters out

0:04:13.800 --> 0:04:18.760
<v Speaker 1>to the polls. Yes, so, um so what did the

0:04:18.880 --> 0:04:20.760
<v Speaker 1>pattern in Britain as in much of the rest of

0:04:20.760 --> 0:04:23.520
<v Speaker 1>the world is that old people vote and young people

0:04:23.560 --> 0:04:27.440
<v Speaker 1>don't vote because young people are fectless. And the assumption

0:04:29.320 --> 0:04:32.320
<v Speaker 1>with on on on good evidence is that in this election,

0:04:32.800 --> 0:04:34.800
<v Speaker 1>old people are more likely to vote to leave the

0:04:34.920 --> 0:04:37.839
<v Speaker 1>EU and young people are more likely to vote to

0:04:37.880 --> 0:04:41.240
<v Speaker 1>stay in the EU. So there there. If you're if

0:04:41.279 --> 0:04:45.479
<v Speaker 1>you're a Remain campaigner, you're desperately trying to trying to

0:04:45.560 --> 0:04:48.760
<v Speaker 1>motivate young people to to go out and vote, which,

0:04:48.839 --> 0:04:51.520
<v Speaker 1>like trying to get teenagers to do anything, is a

0:04:51.520 --> 0:04:55.520
<v Speaker 1>bit of a thankless task. Um, and if you're, if you're.

0:04:55.320 --> 0:04:57.720
<v Speaker 1>The thing that the Leave campaigners have got on their

0:04:57.760 --> 0:05:00.920
<v Speaker 1>side is that there are we we there are a

0:05:00.920 --> 0:05:03.239
<v Speaker 1>few million people in this country who has one person

0:05:03.279 --> 0:05:05.920
<v Speaker 1>said to me would walk across broken glass to vote

0:05:05.960 --> 0:05:08.599
<v Speaker 1>to get Brittain out of the European Union. Now, whether

0:05:08.680 --> 0:05:13.599
<v Speaker 1>that's enough, Um? Is it? Will? I'll tell you in

0:05:13.640 --> 0:05:19.839
<v Speaker 1>three weeks. Yeah, it's it's it's it's upon us, isn't it? Um?

0:05:19.920 --> 0:05:24.120
<v Speaker 1>When you look at uh, the the issues behind is

0:05:24.240 --> 0:05:28.279
<v Speaker 1>certainly Uh. One of the people who are against Brexit,

0:05:28.320 --> 0:05:30.440
<v Speaker 1>and even people who are kind of on the sidelines

0:05:31.040 --> 0:05:34.520
<v Speaker 1>are saying it's it's very difficult to predict with certainty

0:05:34.920 --> 0:05:38.040
<v Speaker 1>what will happen. And in fact, the Bank of England

0:05:38.040 --> 0:05:42.840
<v Speaker 1>has come under some criticism recently, including by a Princeton

0:05:42.920 --> 0:05:47.599
<v Speaker 1>University professor that that saying making these predictions about how

0:05:47.640 --> 0:05:50.960
<v Speaker 1>hard it will hit the UK economy are are wrong

0:05:51.040 --> 0:05:54.200
<v Speaker 1>and kind of incendiary, that they're stepping overstepping abound because

0:05:54.279 --> 0:05:57.760
<v Speaker 1>you don't really know what will happen. Well, you don't know,

0:05:57.880 --> 0:06:01.440
<v Speaker 1>and there's there's there's, there's there's sort of there's two criticisms.

0:06:01.480 --> 0:06:04.640
<v Speaker 1>One one a fairer than the other. It is. The

0:06:06.360 --> 0:06:11.480
<v Speaker 1>Treasury has issued some incredibly specific reports about what would

0:06:11.480 --> 0:06:14.040
<v Speaker 1>happen in the short term and the long term if

0:06:14.080 --> 0:06:18.640
<v Speaker 1>Britain left the EU with very precise numbers. Now they

0:06:18.760 --> 0:06:22.520
<v Speaker 1>can't produce precise numbers and really nobody, nobody knows what's

0:06:22.560 --> 0:06:25.880
<v Speaker 1>going to happen in the future. That these forecasts are

0:06:26.240 --> 0:06:30.880
<v Speaker 1>necessarily unreliable. That said, I can say that if I

0:06:30.960 --> 0:06:33.680
<v Speaker 1>eat take every day for a year, I will probably

0:06:33.680 --> 0:06:35.080
<v Speaker 1>be fatter at the end of it than if I

0:06:35.120 --> 0:06:37.560
<v Speaker 1>don't take cake every day for a year. And that

0:06:37.760 --> 0:06:39.720
<v Speaker 1>kind of what the Treasury would say in their own

0:06:39.760 --> 0:06:43.240
<v Speaker 1>defense is that that kind of forecasting of if we

0:06:43.320 --> 0:06:46.840
<v Speaker 1>do this, if we leave the EU, they would say,

0:06:46.880 --> 0:06:50.480
<v Speaker 1>we are more likely to lose inward investment. It's going

0:06:50.520 --> 0:06:52.680
<v Speaker 1>to create a lot of uncertainty for businesses that are

0:06:52.680 --> 0:06:56.240
<v Speaker 1>already putting off spending decisions. Some multinational companies have said

0:06:56.240 --> 0:07:00.600
<v Speaker 1>they'd move people into the EU. So from that point

0:07:00.640 --> 0:07:02.839
<v Speaker 1>of view, can say all of that would probably slow

0:07:02.880 --> 0:07:06.520
<v Speaker 1>the economy, and to some extent even the Leave campaign

0:07:06.560 --> 0:07:09.440
<v Speaker 1>has acknowledged that they would. It can't get away from

0:07:09.440 --> 0:07:11.880
<v Speaker 1>fact that there would be short term uncertainty when you

0:07:11.960 --> 0:07:14.840
<v Speaker 1>don't know what it would look like, so there would

0:07:14.840 --> 0:07:18.000
<v Speaker 1>be short have certain leave. The campaigners will say, well,

0:07:18.040 --> 0:07:20.200
<v Speaker 1>in the long term, you know, being tied to the

0:07:20.360 --> 0:07:21.880
<v Speaker 1>U is not a good thing to be tied to.

0:07:22.000 --> 0:07:26.280
<v Speaker 1>This is a ship that's sinking. That's that's the leave argument. Well,

0:07:26.600 --> 0:07:31.240
<v Speaker 1>one of the more compelling arguments seems to me is

0:07:31.280 --> 0:07:33.560
<v Speaker 1>what this would do to the City of London, potentially

0:07:33.600 --> 0:07:37.960
<v Speaker 1>the financial district that is so important to the UK,

0:07:38.280 --> 0:07:41.360
<v Speaker 1>to Europe, really to the world that that uh with

0:07:41.720 --> 0:07:45.240
<v Speaker 1>a Brexit vote could definitely mean that the city is

0:07:45.280 --> 0:07:48.640
<v Speaker 1>no longer the center and certain companies would leave. In fact,

0:07:48.680 --> 0:07:50.600
<v Speaker 1>I think I saw an estimate that what thirty four

0:07:50.640 --> 0:07:53.120
<v Speaker 1>thousand or thirty eight thousand jobs at least would be

0:07:53.120 --> 0:07:56.480
<v Speaker 1>at risk. I've seen higher estimates from that. But Jamie

0:07:56.520 --> 0:08:00.600
<v Speaker 1>had Jamie di'm in here last week saying, um, if

0:08:00.640 --> 0:08:03.280
<v Speaker 1>if Britain votes to leave, he's telling his staff, you know,

0:08:03.320 --> 0:08:05.119
<v Speaker 1>do what you do, what you want. But if Britain

0:08:05.200 --> 0:08:07.720
<v Speaker 1>votes leave, you should know that we would be moving

0:08:07.760 --> 0:08:12.000
<v Speaker 1>people into the European Union from here now. And there's

0:08:12.000 --> 0:08:16.160
<v Speaker 1>a whole bunch of Euro denominated trades that currently take

0:08:16.240 --> 0:08:19.240
<v Speaker 1>place through the City of London, and the very interesting

0:08:19.280 --> 0:08:22.480
<v Speaker 1>question as to whether that could continue if Britain were outside,

0:08:22.920 --> 0:08:25.960
<v Speaker 1>not just outside the European Single Currency as it is

0:08:26.000 --> 0:08:29.600
<v Speaker 1>at the moment, but actually outside the European Union. There's

0:08:29.640 --> 0:08:32.680
<v Speaker 1>a strong argument it wouldn't. I did. On the other hand,

0:08:32.760 --> 0:08:35.760
<v Speaker 1>here one person said to me last week, he said, well, look,

0:08:36.080 --> 0:08:38.599
<v Speaker 1>the thing about the thing about the city is American

0:08:38.600 --> 0:08:41.160
<v Speaker 1>bankers want to live in London and their wives want

0:08:41.200 --> 0:08:42.840
<v Speaker 1>to live in Nonder, their husbands want to live in London.

0:08:42.880 --> 0:08:44.679
<v Speaker 1>They want to bring their children up in London. They

0:08:44.679 --> 0:08:46.880
<v Speaker 1>don't want to live in Frankfurt, they don't want to

0:08:46.880 --> 0:08:49.959
<v Speaker 1>live in Europe. They would find a way, they said,

0:08:50.040 --> 0:08:53.240
<v Speaker 1>they would find a way somehow to continue doing these

0:08:53.280 --> 0:08:58.240
<v Speaker 1>things from from London. But again that's uncertainty. We can

0:08:58.280 --> 0:09:02.600
<v Speaker 1>suspect that. We don't know that, and that is the

0:09:02.640 --> 0:09:05.720
<v Speaker 1>remain big argument is it's a terrible, terrible risk you're

0:09:05.720 --> 0:09:09.640
<v Speaker 1>thinking of taking. So what does this mean? I mean,

0:09:09.640 --> 0:09:14.839
<v Speaker 1>this seems to be so crucial for David Cameron. Oh yes, goodness, yes,

0:09:15.480 --> 0:09:17.599
<v Speaker 1>I mean. The funny thing about this debate is, in

0:09:17.640 --> 0:09:22.720
<v Speaker 1>a way is that it's consistently looking at polling the

0:09:22.760 --> 0:09:27.079
<v Speaker 1>British people are not very exercised about European Union membership,

0:09:27.400 --> 0:09:31.199
<v Speaker 1>but a very small number of people are extremely concerned

0:09:31.240 --> 0:09:34.160
<v Speaker 1>about it, and all of them are Conservative members of Parliament,

0:09:34.720 --> 0:09:38.600
<v Speaker 1>and they forced Cameron in the last Parliament to promise

0:09:38.679 --> 0:09:41.559
<v Speaker 1>this referendum, and effectively, in the end Cameron sort of said, okay, look,

0:09:41.600 --> 0:09:43.480
<v Speaker 1>you can have the referendum and I will show you

0:09:43.920 --> 0:09:47.319
<v Speaker 1>that nobody in the country cares about this thing that

0:09:47.360 --> 0:09:49.480
<v Speaker 1>you think is the most important thing in the world.

0:09:50.200 --> 0:09:53.600
<v Speaker 1>And he has effectively enlisted the entire British public to

0:09:53.720 --> 0:09:56.400
<v Speaker 1>prove a point to his party. And the great danger

0:09:56.520 --> 0:09:59.320
<v Speaker 1>is that he won't do that. If Britain votes sixty

0:09:59.360 --> 0:10:01.840
<v Speaker 1>forty to stay in, then he can really turn around

0:10:01.840 --> 0:10:04.520
<v Speaker 1>and tell him to get lost. But if it's very

0:10:04.520 --> 0:10:07.040
<v Speaker 1>close or return to the Britain votes to leave, Cameron

0:10:07.160 --> 0:10:09.480
<v Speaker 1>Cameron will have been proved wrong. If Britain votes to leave,

0:10:10.160 --> 0:10:12.280
<v Speaker 1>David Cameron, who does not want Britain to leave the

0:10:12.280 --> 0:10:16.400
<v Speaker 1>European Union, will effectively have suffered the biggest foreign policy

0:10:16.520 --> 0:10:20.440
<v Speaker 1>defeat for a prime minister, arguably since the SUS War

0:10:21.000 --> 0:10:23.320
<v Speaker 1>sus Crisis, which you may not be a big deal

0:10:23.320 --> 0:10:25.480
<v Speaker 1>in America, but that's generally the sort of a benchmark

0:10:26.040 --> 0:10:30.800
<v Speaker 1>for total foreign policy disasters in British politics. Well, that

0:10:31.200 --> 0:10:34.000
<v Speaker 1>is that about sums it up, Robert Hutton. If you're

0:10:34.000 --> 0:10:35.679
<v Speaker 1>a betting man, how do you how do you bet

0:10:35.720 --> 0:10:40.680
<v Speaker 1>the vocals on I would still bet with Remain, but

0:10:40.920 --> 0:10:45.839
<v Speaker 1>I'm I'm getting increasingly doubtful about that. Well, we're gonna

0:10:46.000 --> 0:10:48.160
<v Speaker 1>look forward to talking to you again soon. There's the

0:10:48.120 --> 0:10:50.240
<v Speaker 1>floss that we get. I think the more exciting there's

0:10:50.240 --> 0:10:53.920
<v Speaker 1>a vote on Brexit, on the UK leaving European Union

0:10:54.080 --> 0:10:57.160
<v Speaker 1>or staying more excited gets. Robert Hutton is the UK

0:10:57.320 --> 0:11:02.160
<v Speaker 1>Government and politics reporter at Bloomberg News in London. Programming

0:11:02.160 --> 0:11:04.920
<v Speaker 1>note the next two days Taking Stock will be live

0:11:05.040 --> 0:11:11.800
<v Speaker 1>in Orlando Pershing Insight sixteen two thousand plus investment professionals

0:11:11.800 --> 0:11:14.400
<v Speaker 1>from all over the world. This is Bloomberg Radio