by Before the 2016 referendum, Conservative campaigners sold Brexit as the answer to all the country’s problems. Leaving the EU would transform the UK’s economic prospects, making us all richer. It would free up money to spend on the country’s public services, especially the NHS. It would restore control over the country’s immigration system, which would help reduce migration levels.
Four years after Britain left the EU, this Brexit manna is yet to come. Little wonder: the campaign for Brexit is perhaps the most dishonest political movement this country has ever seen. It is true that the result of the referendum itself did not push the UK into recession as Chancellor George Osborne predicted at the time. But none of the false promises materialized. Brexit left the UK poorer in the long term, and the deal negotiated by Boris Johnson pushed Northern Ireland into a destructive political stasis. Of course that didn’t stop the government claiming it was a huge success. Last week, the Department of Trade and Industry published what can only be described as political propaganda, containing cherry-picked statistics to create the illusion that, four years on, Brexit has brought nothing but benefits.
This document shows the depressing reality that today’s Conservative party is very much the political successor to the official Vote Leave campaign, which told voters that Brexit would not be a painful trade-off, engaging in “ clear misuse of official statistics” to deploy. the false claim that leaving the EU would be free £350m a week for the NHS and implicitly suggested that staying in the EU would mean sharing a border with Syria and Iraq. We believe that the UK economy has been re-engineered for the better by a cluster of free trade markets, most of which simply replace those the UK had access to through the EU anyway: UK accession with the trans. the Pacific partnership, which the government estimates will be worth only 0.06% of GDP by 2040; and a handful of “global trade wins” including better access to the Mexican market for pork producers, and improved access to the Chinese beauty market, which according to the British Beauty Council has nothing to do with Brexit, and is far more important than the market. £850m he says the beauty industry has lost as a result of leaving the EU.
Brexit did not guarantee the long-term success of the Tories at the ballot box because the promises were built on sand
Presenting such an incomplete picture, this official government document is very misleading. It is the most basic economics that you cannot assess the impact of a policy like Brexit on a country’s economy without looking at its costs and benefits; listing only one side of the balance sheet is worse than useless. The overall effect of Brexit on the economy will be to make us much poorer. Analysis from the National Institute for Economic and Social Research estimates that GDP was between 2% and 3% lower at the end of last year than it would have been had the UK not left the EU; equivalent to a loss of £850 per person in national income, rising to £2,300 per person by 2035. Building trade barriers with our largest trading partner and closest to free trade deals with smaller economies could never pay off to follow the other side of the world. off. In addition, business investment levels are down 30% compared to the pre-referendum trend.
This is poverty that the UK cannot afford. While government ministers take to the airwaves to decry partial statistics celebrating Britain’s economic success, the reality of people’s wages and household incomes tells a different story. Analysis by the Resolution Foundation shows that real wages will be no higher in 2024 than they were in 2006, a terrifying tale of stagnation. External factors such as the war in Ukraine have contributed to an increase in energy bills and food prices, but not only is household income less resilient against these shocks due to Brexit, but through its impact on the levels of the pound, itself to raise inflation.
This is separate from the impact of Brexit on governance in Northern Ireland. Brexit is not the only destabilizing influence but it undoubtedly contributed to the tension that led to the collapse of the Northern Ireland executive between 2017 and 2020, and again from 2020 until last week. The latest re-imagining of border checks in the Irish Sea necessitated by Brexit has led to a power-sharing reform that was sealed yesterday. But with several issues still unresolved, there is no guarantee that this measure will hold for the long term. Meanwhile, net migration has continued to grow since Brexit as an economic imperative, particularly to fill urgent staff shortages in the NHS and care system.
The Tory community on Brexit was not going to achieve long-term success for them at the ballot box because their promises were based on sand. A poll last week found that 57% of people think Brexit was more of a failure; only 13% think it has improved. But whether or not the public blame Brexit for the state of the economy, the polls suggest that voters are willing to hold the government to account for the cost of living crisis and the state of the NHS. It is unlikely that the Ministers will escape from their demands regarding misleading the public and causing economic pain to the country; but not before they have done untold damage to the UK’s long-term interests.
