To read the British Prime Minister, the third anniversary of the United Kingdom’s exit from the European Union, Brexit, is a celebration. “A huge opportunity”, even. In a press release published on January 31, the 100th day of taking office, Rishi Sunak toasts to the “growth of the British economy” to come, freed from the yoke of old Europe and its rules deemed too restrictive and unfavorable.
However, the United Kingdom does not experience at all the intoxication of renewed prosperity. This Wednesday, the British are striking and demonstrating, while the British economy is rocking severely: recession, inflation, shortages and additional costs… Three years after the divorce with the European Union, the social movement has reached an unprecedented scale for ten years. years, and the country’s economic health record is particularly bleak.
-0.6% GDP, +10.5% inflation
The United Kingdom appears particularly sensitive to the consequences of the war in Ukraine and the setbacks of emerging from the Covid-19 pandemic. According to the latest forecasts from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the country will be the only major economy to suffer a recession this year, with a contraction of 0.6% of its economy. Even Russia at war and under sanctions is expected to grow. The United Kingdom is also experiencing one of the strongest inflations, reaching 10.5% at the start of 2023, a level not reached for more than 40 years.
The cost of Brexit? 113 billion euros… per year
Even if the Covid-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine have considerably aggravated the situation, the damage is there, and appeared as early as 2016, the date of the vote in favor of Brexit. According to the public budget forecasting body OBR, leaving the EU would reduce the size of the UK economy by around 4% in the long term. Brexit costs around 124 billion euros a year (100 billion pounds), according to an analysis by Bloomberg Economicsan agency specializing in financial information.
Business investment down 20% compared to other G7 countries
“The break with the single market could have had an impact on the British economy more quickly than most other forecasters had imagined”, detail the economists behind this study, Ana Andrade and Dan Hanson. Consequence: the British market would have dried up, with investors preferring to wait for stabilization, and would have taken full force the distance with its main economic partner the EU, without the dikes put in place having had time to take effect. . As a result, investment growth no longer follows the G7 average, and drops by 20%.
370,000 fewer European workers
With Brexit, and the return of administrative formalities, the United Kingdom is depriving itself of 370,000 European workers who could have partly filled the labor shortages which are slowing down the British economy. A figure which tends to fall, specifies all the same the report. The United Kingdom is increasingly calling on non-European labor to speed up labor immigration.
What do these poor results matter, with disastrous consequences for the British, former Prime Minister Boris Johnson also wanted to make this date a celebration. “Happy Brexit Day,” he posted on his social media. The main message of his video? An invitation to “put aside all this negativity” heard about Brexit, and to “remember the opportunities to come”, when 45% of Britons believe that the exit from the EU is going less well than expected, according to an Ipsos poll. They were only 28% in June 2021.