The top-line costs alone expose the raw deal we’ve ended up with. The so-called divorce settlement from the Union tops £30 billion, and the loss in goods exports stands at £27 billion. UK food exports are estimated to have decreased by £2.8 billionannually.
Businesses have also been hit terribly. Up to 56% of dairy producers are struggling to find workers (as per an Arla survey). According to the Marine Management Organisation, seafood exports have dropped by 118,000 tonnes in the UK since 2019.
Over 16,000 companies with European customers have simply stopped exporting to the bloc. There’s also been a dramatic spike in immigration, and although 1.2 million EU nationals have left the UK in the wake of Brexit, net migration has soared by 2.3 million.
In fact, Brexit’s biggest promise was to control immigration – but we’ve ended up here. In total, 3.6 million immigrants have entered Britain since the freedom of movement laws were curtailed. Meanwhile, EU students at UK universities have fallen by a third.
So I’m not fan of Brexit but the figures are out of context and are not “catastrophic” which is why Brexit so far is being ignored as an issue.
For example, in 2022 exports were at £384bn, imports at £627bn, and exports to the EU were actually up overall.
So the £22bn is lost exports is theoretically how much more would have been exported and it’s equivalent to 5.8% of exports or a 5.4% increase. Nice to have but not as framatic as the article says.
The £30bn divorce Bill sounds a lot. But total UK spending for 2023 was £1,189bn for example. That’s equivalent of 2.5% of spending and was a one off cost in one year.
So, no these things are not good, but also they are not catastrophic and so they are barely noticeable to people. Leaving the EU has been a negative but it’s been a smaller economic negative in the short term than perhaps was expected.
The long term economic damage of the cumulative loss of trade growth and is more substantial but will only really become apparent to people if the EU quality of living goes up and the UK falls behind. Unfortunately the EU is mired in its own financial and political problems (particularly Germany and France) so the effect of Brexit will be hidden from view from most people for the next few years.
I want us to rejoin the EU but I’m worried that the damage is just about tolerable enough that it may not offset the higher bar for reentering. We gave up a lot of exclusive hard won benefits for the UK that we wouldn’t get back on rejoining - so such as rebates to account for the broken Common Agricultural Policy, and opt outs on joining the Euro and Eurozone.