Remainers say Brexit has caused an economic ‘hit’. Has it really? The evidence says NO.
Remainers / Rejoiners cite Economic growth is lower due to Brexit.
GDP growth has been higher in Britain than in the Eurozone since we left: in 2021 by 7.4% to 5.3%; and it is predicted by the IMF to be higher in 2022 (3.7% to 2.8%).
If in 2023 it is lower (1.2% to 2.3%) than in the Eurozone — the one IMF forecast that Remainers are eagerly highlighting — this is because the Eurozone is belatedly catching up. Yet so far, the UK continues to outperform the EU: British GDP growth in the first quarter of 2022 was more than double that of the EU (0,75% to 0.27).
Sources: International Monetary Fund [IMF], Office for National Statistics [ONS], Eurostat
In the wider global context too, UK growth remained above average: in 2021, it was 7.4%, compared with the average in all advanced economies of 5.2%. The IMF forecasts that UK growth this year will be 3.7%, compared with the advanced economies' average of 3.3%.
Source: https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WEO/Issues/2022/04/19/world-economic-outlook-april-2022
Remainers / Rejoiners cite the cost of living has risen due to Brexit.
Food prices (April 2021-April 2022) rose 6.5% in the UK, and 9.2% in the Eurozone.
Sources: Eurostat, ONS
Prices of all UK imports from the EU showed no hike in the months following our exit from the Single Market. Since 2021, they have indeed risen: from March 2021 to March 2022 they rose 13%. But in the Eurozone, import prices have risen by nearly twice as much over the same period — by 25%.
Sources: ONS and Eurostat
Industrial producer prices are presently increasing in the EU at double the rate of the UK.
Sources: Eurostat, ONS
Clearly, price rises in the UK cannot be blamed on Brexit when prices in the EU are rising as fast and often faster.
Remainers / Rejoiners citrate trade has collapsed due to Brexit?
There has been a slight fall in our trade with the EU, but much of the decline is in the export of North Sea Oil because we are producing less, partly by choice.
Exports of other goods, however, have not shown a fall, and from January 2020 to May 2022, Eurostar freight volumes rose by 5%.
Sources: ONS and Getlink
If we take as an example trade with France, British exports between 2016 and 2020 followed a practically identical course with those of German exports to France; and since the end of 2020, British exports to France have significantly outpaced those of Germany.
Source: Direction Générale des Douânes et des Droits indirects
Financial services exports — one of our major industries — have remained stable with the EU, in the last three months of 2021 they amounted to £6 billion — the same as for the same period in 2019, before Covid and when we were still in the Single Market. But our financial services exports worldwide rose over the same period from £13.6 billion to £14.8 billion. Source: ONS
In general, over the last decade, our trade has been rising six times faster with the rest of the world than with the Eurozone.
Remainers / Rejoiners cite labour shortages due to Brexit.
There are labour shortages around the globe — a consequence of the disruption caused by Covid. The Bank of France, for example, announced on 13 March that half of all French firms are suffering from recruiting problems. Source: Le Monde, 21 March 2022.
In Britain, the shortage cannot be blamed on Brexit, because the number of EU-born individuals in employment fell by only 20,000 between 2019 and 2022 — disproving stories of a mass exodus. Also, over the same period, people from the rest of the world with jobs in the UK rose by 440,000.
“Brexit-induced border bureaucracy has raised prices in the UK and devastated our export trade with the EU ?
Exporters of food and beverages faced arguably the largest new barriers of any sector post-Brexit, and very pessimistic predictions were made by Remainers about their future. What has actually happened?
Our fishing exports to the EU — around £100 million per month — are little changed from 2014, long before Brexit.
Other food exports are slightly up, and beverages exports in April 2022 (worth £257 million) were 10.5% higher than at the start of 2020.
Scottish salmon exports — widely predicted by Remainers to be doomed by Brexit — are booming: up by nearly a third last year to the EU, and by 36% to global markets, confirming salmon’s place as the UK’s biggest single food export.
Sources: ONS; https://dailybusinessgroup.co.uk/2022/02/scottish-salmon-exports-to-eu-surge-29/
Our net trading position with the EU — i.e. imports compared with exports — has substantially improved since we left the Single Market. Though we still have a large trade deficit, it has more than halved, by the equivalent of 2% of GDP (in monetary terms, over £40 billion)
Source: ONS
It's quite clear from the evidence that Remainers / Rejoiners are not looking at the evidence and either dont care or are so brainwashed by the pro-European Union media and pro-European Union political parties that they dont want to look at the evidence.
When pointed out with evidence that economic growth since 2016 had been practically the same in the UK and the EU, that inflation too was virtually the same (and food price inflation lower in the UK), and that labour shortages were being felt across the EU and beyond, this is always disputed.
Brexit had to be a failure: no other possibility was conceivable to Remainers / Rejoiners. Yet when asked to produce their evidence none of them can or they focus on the trivial like Stella Creasy did when she praised the EU for aiming to ensure that there was only one kind of mobile phone charging cable.
When you provoke some discussion of the EU’s flaws and its problems pointing out, that being in the EU was far from being a risk-free option, given its political, economic and financial troubles. Referring to its fundamentally undemocratic nature and the corruption of those running it (the head of the European Central Bank convicted of complicity in the misuse of huge public funds, the president of the Commission found to have plagiarized her doctoral thesis, and so on). they point that the EU is constantly in flux, what the hell does that actually mean by the way?
Remainers and now Rejoiners unsurprisingly, insist that Brexit had been a disaster. That none of the apocalyptic predictions made by the Remain campaign (including David Cameron, George Osborne, the CBI, The Treasury …) had actually happened, does not stop them
Much of Remainers / Rejoiners arguments are very familiar from media reports over the years.
The City of London had supposedly ‘lost 7,000 jobs’ — a tiny proportion of the vast exodus predicted.
And, in fact, almost balanced by 5,400 new City jobs created by Brexit. Large international banks, indeed, have increased their London staffing.
It's now 2023 soon to be 2024 and what have we seen this year?
We see Germany the powerhouse of the EU on its knees, I take no joy in that, and I wish the people in Germany much happiness and I hope they get out of the mess they are in. But this is what Rejoiners were hoping for the UK so they could say we told you what would happen.
If you need any more proof
Read these below, these are cold hard facts that cannot be ignored nor should they. Because if Germany is like this what does it say about the rest of the countries in the EU? If Germany sneezes 27 countrys get a cold that is another fact.
https://medium.com/@1949graham/german-economy-enters-recession-amid-a-worsening-outlook-392f8fd0dd09
Yet it was the one country that had the courage to say we dont need to be in the EU that is doing well
These are verifiable facts that Rejoiners dont want you to know about because if you do it scuppers their plans.
