Voting to come out of the biggest trading group in the world was an unmitigated disaster.
The UK’s GDP is 5.2 per cent smaller than a modelled ‘doppelgänger’ UK that did not leave the EU; investment is 13.7 per cent lower, and goods trade, 13.6 per cent lower. Most of those costs are down to Brexit.
By December 2021, leaving the single market and customs union had reduced UK goods trade by 14.9 per cent. And new analysis shows that UK exports have taken a larger hit than imports.
Without Brexit we would have had growth and would not have needed Truss’s mad bribe to attempt to entice all the wealthy entrepreneurs and firms back that they drove away with their extreme Tory Brexit.
The British people voted for Brexit but there were lots of forms of Brexit. There was never a mandate for the most extreme form. That is what has crippled Britain. We should have had a multiparty approach with a soft Brexit. We could have left the EU and stayed in the Single Market and Customs Union. That would have taken back control without crippling trade. Unfortunately, the extreme wing of the Tory Party, the ERG nutcases, took control and forced an extreme form. A number of them, like Rees-Mogg, made a fortune out of it!
The solution is simple! Rejoin the Single Market and Customs Union and economic growth will soar, the skills shortages will be resolved.
