{"id":745585,"date":"2026-02-06T05:45:12","date_gmt":"2026-02-06T05:45:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/745585\/"},"modified":"2026-02-06T05:45:12","modified_gmt":"2026-02-06T05:45:12","slug":"brexit-truths-inconvenient-for-labour-as-red-lines-take-toll","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/745585\/","title":{"rendered":"Brexit truths inconvenient for Labour as red lines take toll"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n \u201cWho\u2019s celebrating?\u201d That was the question posed several days ago by European Movement UK<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n

\n You have probably guessed it by now. The question was in relation to Brexit \u2013 specifically its sixth birthday.\n<\/p>\n

\n In terms of the answer, there is precious little sign of that loud tub-thumping<\/a> that came from the Brexit diehards as they excitedly rushed headlong into their great folly.\n<\/p>\n

\n Nor should there be, of course, given the colossal damage to the UK economy and living standards. This damage, European Movement UK was absolutely right to point out, is very much ongoing.\n<\/p>\n

\n The cross-party European Movement UK was established by Sir Winston Churchill in 1949 to promote closer ties between the UK and European nations.\n<\/p>\n

\n Sir Nick Harvey, chief executive of European Movement UK, declared as Brexit\u2019s sixth birthday came round: “There are very few now who will say with a straight face that Brexit has brought any benefits to the UK. Six years on from the UK’s official exit from the EU, it’s clear that we have all been bruised in a thousand different ways from our decision to detach ourselves from our largest trading partner.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

\n “The economy has struggled, businesses have battled against new red tape that has seen many strangled out of trading with the EU at all, and the UK’s international reputation has been hammered.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\n He added: \u201cWe are most of us poorer because of its severe economic damage, our young people have been hamstrung by the removal of their ability to live and study in Europe, and our political landscape has been fractured by a decision that continues to divide, rather than unite. The promised sovereignty feels hollow when weighed against the tangible loss of influence, opportunity and shared purpose. What was sold as liberation has, in reality, become a lesson in the profound costs of isolation.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\n That sums up the enormous and wide-ranging damage of Brexit rather well. Maybe someone should acquire a double-decker bus (like the Brexit one), adorn it with Sir Nick\u2019s comments and drive it around the country, given people should absolutely be told the reality of the situation.\n<\/p>\n

\n And Sir Nick\u2019s \u201cvery few now who will say with a straight face that Brexit has brought any benefits to the UK\u201d observation seems to be on the money. Whatever the case, it would surely take some brass neck to claim positives with a straight face.\n<\/p>\n

\n Of course, while the UK\u2019s official Brexit brought partying in Parliament Square on January 31, 2020, it was not until the end of that year that the real damage began.\n<\/p>\n

\n The UK\u2019s exit from the European single market came on December 31, 2020, after a hard Brexit overseen by then prime minister Boris Johnson and negotiated by Lord David Frost, former chief executive of the Scotch Whisky<\/a> Association.\n<\/p>\n

\n And it is surely always worth highlighting the scale of the damage from Brexit, given the continuing inertia on the part of the UK Government<\/a> to address this in a meaningful way.\n<\/p>\n

\n Of course, the friendlier tones towards the European Union from Sir Keir Starmer<\/a>\u2019s administration are welcome, as is the UK rejoining the Erasmus+ scheme, which enables young people to study and train abroad. However, at the end of the day, this amounts to small potatoes relative to the enormous economic damage from Brexit, an ongoing effect being enabled by Labour\u2019s \u201cred lines\u201d of not rejoining the EU, the European single market or even the customs union.\n<\/p>\n

\n Read more<\/strong>\n<\/p>\n

\n A\u00a0working paper on the impact of Brexit published in November by the private, non-profit, non-partisan National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), which is based in the US at Cambridge in Massachusetts,\u00a0estimated the hit to UK gross domestic product from Brexit at 6% to 8%.\n<\/p>\n

\n The authors of the working paper are Nicholas Bloom of Stanford University, Philip Bunn of the Bank of England, Paul Mizen of King\u2019s College London, Pawel Smietanka of the Deutsche Bundesbank, and Gregory Thwaites of the University of Nottingham.\n<\/p>\n

\n The abstract for the working paper, The Economic Impact of Brexit, states: \u201cThis paper examines the impact of the UK’s decision to leave the European Union (Brexit) in 2016. Using almost a decade of data since the referendum, we combine simulations based on macro data with estimates derived from micro data collected through our Decision Maker Panel survey. These estimates suggest that by 2025, Brexit had reduced UK GDP by 6% to 8%, with the impact accumulating gradually over time.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\n To put that 6% to 8% into context,\u00a0it is worth comparing it again with the UK Government\u2019s estimate of the benefits from the India free trade deal about which it has made so much noise.\n<\/p>\n

\n The UK Government calculates that annual UK GDP will by 2040 be 0.13% higher than it would have been without the India trade deal.\n<\/p>\n

\n In any case, people should be able to understand that a country losing 6% to 8% of its output, or even 4% if you take the Office for Budget Responsibility\u2019s estimate spelled out by its then chairman Richard Hughes in the spring of 2023, is a very big deal indeed. And people should also realise this huge hit to GDP is not an abstract thing \u2013 feeding through directly to a terrible crush on living standards in what are already difficult economic times.\n<\/p>\n

\n The \u201cBrexit is done and we must all move on\u201d mantra from the Leave brigade is, it should go without saying, as nonsensical as it is irritating.\n<\/p>\n

\n The Labour Government really needs to wake up on Brexit and recognise the urgency of reversing this colossal folly.\n<\/p>\n

\n Sir Nick said on the occasion of Brexit\u2019s sixth birthday: “It is encouraging that the Government now appears to be taking seriously its promise of resetting the relationship between the UK and the EU. However, it is yet to translate into the economic benefits that are available on our international doorstep. It must now look at erasing some of its own red lines, starting with the profound benefits that access to the EU’s single market would bring.”\n<\/p>\n

\n If you take away the politics<\/a> in terms of Labour\u2019s seeming fear of the red-wall voters who swept Mr Johnson to power in the December 2019 general election and of Brexiters in general and look instead at what the economy needs, rejoining the European single market is a no-brainer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cWho\u2019s celebrating?\u201d That was the question posed several days ago by European Movement UK. You have probably guessed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":745586,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5226],"tags":[802,748,2000,299,5187,1699,4884,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-745585","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-brexit","8":"tag-brexit","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-eu","11":"tag-europe","12":"tag-european","13":"tag-european-union","14":"tag-great-britain","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116022104868597240","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/745585","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=745585"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/745585\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/745586"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=745585"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=745585"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=745585"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}