The British opposition leader Sir Keir Starmer has said there is no going back on Brexit, in a speech earlier this week.
Instead, he offered a new slogan as part of a drive to ensure Britain thrives: "Make Brexit Work".
"There are some who say 'we don’t need to make Brexit work — we need to reverse it'," the Labour leader told the Centre for European Reform (CER). "I couldn’t disagree more."
"Let me be very clear. Under Labour, Britain will not go back into the EU. We will not be joining the single market. We will not be joining a customs union."
It represents a major policy shift for Starmer — who in the run-up to Brexit called for a deal to be put to a second referendum, and lauded the benefits of the free movement of workers, now consigned to the past.
It also further distances the country's current direction from the fiery debates and deadlock in the aftermath of the 2016 referendum, with the two largest parties firmly wedded to the UK's departure from the EU.
But the change comes as for the first time, economists are separating the economic damage done by Brexit — under the terms Boris Johnson's government negotiated — from that wrought by the COVID pandemic.
In June, a study by the CER's Deputy Director John Springford examined the economic cost of the UK's departure from the EU so far, setting out to disentangle it from that of COVID-19.
"Now that many advanced economies have recovered and are close to — or above — their pre-pandemic level of output, we can compare Britain’s economic performance to its peers. The results are troubling," he wrote.
Springford compared the UK's performance since Brexit with those of countries with previously similar records.
His "sobering" conclusion is that in the final quarter of 2021, GDP (gross domestic product) was 5.2% smaller, investment 13.7% lower, and goods trade 13.6% lower than what they would have been had the UK remained in the EU.
"The UK had a particularly deep recession in 2020, but it ended COVID restrictions sooner than many of its peers, thanks in part to starting its vaccination campaign early in 2021. That should have made its recovery from COVID faster than other countries, not slower," he says.
"It should trouble Labour and the Conservatives that the economy is lagging so far behind its peers."
Noting that the British finance minister is "raising taxes to their highest share of GDP since the 1960s", Springford's view is that "these tax rises would not have been needed if the UK had stayed in the EU (or in the single market and customs union)".
"It is difficult to disentangle the impacts of Brexit and COVID on the UK economy with precision. But it is hard to avoid the conclusion that Brexit has severely curtailed GDP, investment and goods trade," he conclude
Springford's report has been criticised by Dr Graham Gudgin of the conservative think-tank Policy Exchange. "It will take many years to disentangle the effect of Brexit from all the other influences on the UK economy," he wrote. "It can’t be short-circuited by creating an implausible and flawed methodology to draw premature conclusions."
However, another report from June noted a decline in some aspects of Britain's trade with both EU and non-EU countries that was "not explained by changes in the pattern of global trade during the pandemic".
"The Big Brexit" by the Resolution Foundation think-tank and the London School of Economics (LSE) found that a drop in British "trade openness" — measured as a share of GDP — showed a much higher fall than in countries with similar trade profiles, such as France.
Comments