Boris is Gone, But His Brexit Legacy Remains to Punish the British People

Electing populist, narcissistic, scandal-prone morons has a steep price tag as Americans learned with Donald Trump. To be fair, Boris Johnson is a lot smarter than Donald Trump, but they both had a tendency to play fast and loose with the truth concerning even the most consequential issues facing their nations. Boris handled the pandemic much better than Trump and his support for Ukraine has been exemplary. However, he will always be remembered as the cheerleader and architect of Brexit and that alone will be enough to propel him to the very bottom tier of British Prime Ministers.

After six years, the UK is stuck with Brexit and even prominent "Remainers" in the British Labor Party said recently that the nation must find ways to make the best of it. There's no going back. No one wants to go hat in hand back to the EU and admit Brexit was a terrible mistake. It would be far too humiliating. A best case scenario now might allow the UK to join the EU's single market without full membership. However, that would require the UK to accept rules regarding the free movement of labor, capital, and goods and a whole new set of very embarrassing negotiations with the EU.

So, in the short term, the UK is stuck with Brexit and its impact on the British economy and none of it is good. As we reported earlier in the year, Brexit has snarled the economy in mountains of import-export red tape, "driven the desire for Scottish independence, tanked British exports [see here], reduced the available labor force [see here, here and here, and led to shortages throughout the economy. The whole thing was an amazingly bad idea."

And, now, the British think tank Resolution Foundation has released a study showing that Brexit has reduced the competitiveness of the British economy, with "alarming implications for productivity and wages."

Bloomberg: "The research firm said a loss of openness since Britain left the European Union is set to leave the country poorer in the coming decade, with advanced manufacturing and parts of northern England dealt the heaviest blow." ...

"The analysis, carried out with the London School of Economics, warned that workers can expect to be almost £500 pounds worse off in real terms by 2030 as reduced productivity depresses pay levels across the economy."

Moreover, the British Office for Budget Responsibility recently announced that Brexit will reduce the UK's GDP by 4% in the coming years.

The Guardian: "The Financial Times says such a decline amounts to £100bn in lost output, and £40bn less revenue to the Treasury a year. The UK is now behind all the other G7 nations in the pace of its recovery from the pandemic, with exports by UK small businesses to the EU down significantly."

This is Boris Johnson's legacy. Yes, he will soon be gone, but I doubt that anyone will soon forget what he has wrought.

#brexit #economics

By: Don Lam & Curated Content