Without the avoidable currency devaluation, not suffering the accelerated loss (OBR - est 4%) of productivity, stronger export and trade performance where meaningful agreements have been and continue to be replaced with shirt buttons - just for a start. Then there are the companies who have either closed or reduced capacity as their markets choose alternatives, the sharp fall in inward investment into the UK where even those already established have had to be bunged to remain. Additional costs, increased barriers to trade and reduced opportunities anywhere you look.
We discussed the currency at some length a few pages back, and we might add that theoretically a fall in the currency should have stimulated goods exports, though that clearly hasn't been the case, and that a greater or smaller proportion of this must be attributed to the increased friction in trade with the EU. The OBR states that
potential productivity loss as compared with having stayed a member is likely to be in the region of 4% in the longer term. It also holds its position that leaving the EU will reduce UK trade by 15% compared with having stayed within the EU over the longer term, which I recall as having been 15 years, which would extrapolate UK GDP growth at twice the rate of both the EU and the Eurozone in 2023 had there been no brexit (and a full 2% faster than Germany, the UK's biggest EU trade partner), of which you can make what you will.
Exports of goods have suffered badly, down by over 13% since 2019, and imports by 7.4%. Counterintuitively the UK's exports to its non-EU partners have fallen more sharply than with the EU, which is holding steady. This would suggest that the UK's main trade partners outside the EU are suffering from the global downturn, though so too is Germany, which confuses the issue. The holding steady with the EU also suggests that brexit might not have had as sharp as expected an effect on exports to the bloc, though the TCA seems to have benefited larger corporations at the undoubted expense of SMEs. Trade openness figures are less optimistic still, with a fall of 3% below 2019 figures.
Services are booming, and appear to have brushed off brexit, with growth of 14% between 2019 and the end of 2023, faster than any of its main competitors including the US, and running at nearly 3% above the pre-brexit trend.
In regard of FDI, the UK is second only to France in Europe, and first in a number of value factors such as project size and employment created. Investment in the tech sector is also booming, with record figures in 2023. UK M&A figures are also currently hitting records.
I think we would all agree that the UK needs to seek better trading terms with the EU for manufactured goods than is currently the case. Openness of trade benefits all parties. The issue with this is that the EU is primarily a political project (which is what the UK rejected), and the EU institutions have shown repeatedly that they will always place project over prosperity. It will ultimately be incumbent upon the member countries to reassert their authority over the EU. Whilst there are plenty of signs that this is happening already in some areas, given the EU's traditional grim-faced determination and the fact that it has everything to lose, I am not wildly optimistic. I guess we'll have to wait and see.
Let’s also consider the impact on imports, higher costs and reduced choice...
You said that already.
- which after April will also increase.
Indeed, the biosecurity issue.
None of it was necessary, all of it avoidable and it has achieved absolutely nothing of any benefit as this thread amply demonstrates.
More accurately the thread amply demonstrates that a small number of people on this forum have strongly-held opinions.
The vanity project of people with no concern for anything other than their own political or commercial benefit.
I think you would find that a lot of people voted against their best commercial interests. I am one.
On that last point you have repeated it many times, there is never a need to put those words in your mouth.
No, I have never said that anyone who thought that remaining in the EU was in Britain's best interests is automatically an adorer of all things EU, and to claim otherwise is putting words into my mouth.
I have a great deal of respect for the opinions of many people who voted for the UK to remain in the EU, particularly those whose informed opinion and instinct is broadly Eurosceptic. Most notable amongst them is the late Christopher Booker, who co-authored 'The Great Deception', and campaigned for years against the lies and excesses of the EU institutions, yet set out repeatedly and in detail how and why the UK would be making a terrible error in leaving the bloc in the manner in which it ultimately did. I have less respect for those who voted to remain, cannot accept the result of the referendum, blame everything that doesn't suit them on racism and the stupidity of the plebs, and who have absolutely no clue or even interest as to how the institutions of the EU work, yet brush off any criticism of the organisation, however valid and carefully researched, with the weasel words 'I never said the EU was perfect' invariably followed by 'but...'.
You didn't really answer my question, incidentally, rather rehearsed once again your objections to brexit based upon the economic summations of the OBR; having said, you are of course under no obligation to do so.
