You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.
And the '“sterling … is much too high"' CBI?
Or the MPs on the Treasury Select Committee today giving it to Carney in the neck because they likewise are getting it in the neck from their constituents and bosses of companies residing in their constituencies - where there still remains some manufacturing in the UK, generally 'up North' and in the Midlands - because the reality is manufacturing exporters are being crushed by the ridiculous rise in the pound, due to this 'recovery'?
It's got sweet f.a. to do with historical values of the pound 10, 20, 30 or even 6 years ago, at the time of the crash in 2008, when the pound lost ~25% of its trade-weighted value.
The fact is the pound in the 'abolished boom and bust' period of 2002-2007 was horrendously overvalued, as it was in the late 1990s under another media-hyped 'Cool Britannia' episode, when BMW threw the towel in at Rover Group, and likewise when the post-'Big Bang' deregulation on the London stock market and associated housing bubble centred on London saw sterling go to $2.40, and killed Sir John Egan's independent Jaguar Cars in the US.
Nothing changes in UK. The pound, driven by 'hot money' speculators, the colluding media hype of Britain perennially 'bouncing back' from its actual 100-year plus long economic decline, and the actual more pedestrian explanation of these 'recoveries' always resting on nothing more than a deliberately got-up, unsustainable housing bubble, to rinse Joe Average of all his savings.
The fact is, all those high points on your historical graph just show the pound at its most egregiously overvalued points, as opposed to its merely ridiculously overvalued point right now, of ~€1.25 and $1.70.
The fact is that the UK has two, entirely separately operating economies, one the usual economy that most developed economies have, based on adding value and its ancillary service activity, and then in the UK a dwarfing bubble economy, based on housing and the City of London. The first needs stability to thrive, the latter constant perturbation, from boom to bust and back, repeat ad infinitum.
The first, real economy needs a weaker currency, in the UK's case, as it has run a structural trade deficit, of now around £100bn/year in visibles, for decades.
The second, bubble economy needs a rising currency to give windfall gains to overseas investors speculating on London's property bubble, who then see double gains, from the investment going up say 30% per annum in local currency, and again when converted back to rubles, yuan and dollars, for the Russian oligarchs, Chinese billionaires and so on.
The first, real economy needs sterling at or just below parity to the euro, and around $1.20, so roughly a 25% depreciation compared to today's value.
The second, bubble economy needs absolutely no upper limit to sterling's value, as it's all up-side to the non-domiciled, tax-avoiding off-shored speculators.
And that, this huge irreconcilable difference between the real and the bubble economy in the UK, ladies and gents, is why the UK is absolutely and utterly shagged, when it comes to being a place to have a real economy, and why manufacturers should and will up sticks and move to where they are appreciated, not just with lip service as Carney is trying to pretend today to the MPs, when he'll say the near opposite in his next Mansion House speech to his true stockholders, the bankers.
