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\n A vendor (R) sets up his street stall for the business day at Petticoat Lane market in central London on November 13, 2025. | AFP photo <\/p>\n
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\n A vendor (R) sets up his street stall for the business day at Petticoat Lane market in central London on November 13, 2025. | AFP photo
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Faced with anaemic growth and strained public finances, Britain\u2019s Labour government no longer shies away from pinning the blame on Brexit, as it prepares for a difficult budget likely to include unpopular tax rises.<\/p>\n
How has the rhetoric changed?<\/p>\n
Labour politicians bent over backwards not to mention Brexit as their party swept to power in last year\u2019s election in a careful attempt\u00a0to avoid alienating voters who had backed leaving the EU at the 2016 referendum.<\/p>\n
But in recent weeks, Prime Minister Keir Starmer has accused the previous Conservative government of having negotiated a \u2018botched Brexit deal\u2019, while health minister Wes Streeting said he was \u2018glad that Brexit is a problem whose name we now dare speak\u2019.<\/p>\n
Finance minister Rachel Reeves, who will present her budget on Wednesday, has called the impact of Britain\u2019s departure from the bloc \u201csevere and long-lasting\u201d.<\/p>\n
She believes it has contributed towards weak growth, which slowed to 0.1 per cent in the three months to September, high inflation of 3.6 per cent in October, and a public deficit of about five per cent of GDP.<\/p>\n
The change in rhetoric is part of the groundwork for justifying the expected tax increases, which will follow last year\u2019s rises that the Labour government attributed to a multi-billion-pound \u2018black hole\u2019 left to them by the Conservatives.<\/p>\n
What is the estimated economic impact of Brexit?<\/p>\n
The Office for Budget Responsibility, Britain\u2019s spending watchdog, estimates that Brexit will ultimately reduce the size of the UK\u2019s economy by about four percent and reduce trade by 15 percent.<\/p>\n
It has said that new trade deals signed with countries since Brexit \u201cwill not have a material impact\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u2018Insofar as Brexit has made the economy less open to trade, that will have a negative effect for a period,\u2019 Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey said last month.<\/p>\n
Jonathan Portes, professor of economics and public policy at King\u2019s College London, told AFP \u2018Brexit has clearly damaged the UK economy,\u201d emphasising that it had worsened confidence and investment, and contributed towards \u201cpersistently weak\u2019 exports.<\/p>\n
He added however that years of austerity, convoluted planning systems, and regional disparities have also contributed to slow growth.<\/p>\n
He also noted that France, Germany and Italy have similar growth trajectories, so \u2018Brexit alone cannot be the main explanation.\u2019<\/p>\n
Starmer wants deeper relations with the bloc but has pledged not to return to the single market, customs union or free movement.<\/p>\n
London and Brussels said earlier this month they were set to begin formal negotiations on an agreement to ease the trade of food and agricultural products, which could ultimately strengthen the British economy.<\/p>\n
Is Brexit a political risk?<\/p>\n
The recent shift in tone by senior government figures likely \u2018reflects confidence among ministers that a clear majority of voters believe Brexit was an error\u2019, former prime-ministerial adviser Patrick Diamond told AFP.<\/p>\n
An Ipsos survey published in June found that 54 percent thought Brexit was the wrong decision for the UK, compared to just 32 percent who thought it was right.<\/p>\n
A YouGov poll released the same month indicated that 61 per cent of Britons now consider Brexit to have been a failure and that 56 per cent wanted to rejoin the EU. The surveys have led commentators to talk about \u201cBregret\u201d.<\/p>\n
For Chris Hopkins, director of polling firm Savanta, the anti-Brexit noise is also \u2018a direct response\u2019 to one of the leaders of the leave movement, Nigel Farage, whose anti-immigrant Reform UK party is leading Labour by double-digit margins in opinion polls.<\/p>\n
\u2018It might not win Labour-to-Reform switchers back, but it does create clear space between the parties and the leaders,\u201d Hopkins told AFP.<\/p>\n
\u2018And Labour knows that in many cases it may need to rely on voters from other parties to help it stop the prospect of a Reform-led government.\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A vendor (R) sets up his street stall for the business day at Petticoat…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":589192,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5226],"tags":[24953,24952,24950,24947,24949,802,748,24946,2000,299,5187,1699,4884,24951,24948,24944,24945,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-589191","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-brexit","8":"tag-bangla-online-news","9":"tag-bangladesh-latest-news","10":"tag-bangladesh-news","11":"tag-bangladesh-newspaper","12":"tag-bangladeshi-newspapers","13":"tag-brexit","14":"tag-britain","15":"tag-daily-new-age","16":"tag-eu","17":"tag-europe","18":"tag-european","19":"tag-european-union","20":"tag-great-britain","21":"tag-latest-bangladesh-news","22":"tag-most-popular-outspoken-english-daily-newpaper-in-bangladesh","23":"tag-new-age","24":"tag-the-new-age","25":"tag-uk","26":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115600286963521818","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/589191","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=589191"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/589191\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/589192"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=589191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=589191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=589191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}