London Mayor Sadiq Khan stated on Thursday that Britain’s economy has shrunk by 6% as a result of its exit from the European Union, at an annual cost of 140 billion pounds ($178 billion). By 2035, he predicted that the deficit would have grown to 10%.
Khan, who voted against Brexit in the 2016 referendum as a member of the opposition Labor Party, based his remarks on a study he had ordered from economic experts at Cambridge Econometrics, which calculated the rate at which the British economy would have expanded had it remained in the EU.
The failure of Brexit is evident. Before his scheduled speech later on Thursday, Khan made statements that were made public. “The hard-line version of Brexit we’ve ended up with is dragging our economy down and pushing up the cost of living,” Khan stated.
Before an election, which Prime Minister Rishi Sunak plans to hold in the second part of this year, Labor leads Sunak’s Conservatives by a significant margin.
Keir Starmer, the leader of the Labor Party, has refrained from providing specifics regarding his plans to improve relations with the EU.
The Brexit cost estimate from Cambridge Econometrics is greater than some other recent estimates.
Brexit has shrunk the size of the British economy by 2%–3%, according to estimates released in November by the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR). By 2035, the damage is predicted to increase to 5%–6%.
Jonathan Haskel, a Bank of England policymaker, projected in a private capacity last year that Brexit has hurt corporate investment enough to decrease GDP by 1.3% by the end of 2022 – equivalent to 1,000 pounds per household each year.
Cambridge Econometrics claimed Brexit was anticipated to diminish yearly economic growth in Britain by 0.4 percentage points between now and 2035, lower employment levels by 3 million by 2035, and reduce investment by a third.
Only a few months after Britain officially exited the EU in January 2020, the COVID-19 outbreak has made evaluating the effects of Brexit more difficult.
A new system of work visas has resulted in a significant increase in immigration to Britain from outside the EU, outweighing a decrease in the number of EU immigrants who were previously exempt from needing a visa. As a result, net migration to Britain has increased dramatically.
