According to the latest forecasts, the British economy will be the only major economy that will suffer from recession this year and it is the worst performing among the G-20 economies. Even Russia, which bears the burdens of war and the weight of Western sanctions, will register growth.
On the third anniversary of Britain’s exit from the European Union known as “Brexit”, which falls on Tuesday, British international and governmental institutions also showed that Britain’s economy has become the worst among the “G20” countries, with the exception of Russia.
The decline in the British economy is not due to the repercussions of the Corona crisis or the Ukrainian war only, but some of these institutions indicated that Britain’s losses as a result of “Brexit” were greater than the losses of the European Union itself.
‘huge opportunity’
Amidst an atmosphere of frustration between a social crisis and growing regret, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak defended Brexit as a “huge opportunity”.
On Tuesday, the International Monetary Fund added another piece of bad news, announcing, according to its latest forecasts, that the country will be the only major economy this year to suffer from recession, with its economy contracting by 0.6 percent.
Even Russia, which is at war and under sanctions, will grow.
Government official Richard Holden confirmed on Sky News that the country is “capable of exceeding these expectations as it has already done.”
“If we stick to our plan to halve inflation, the UK should grow faster than Germany and Japan in the next few years,” Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt said in a statement.
For her part, Sophie Lund-Yates, an analyst at Hargreaves Lansdowne, says that “the United Kingdom faces specific problems”, especially energy bills that are higher than anywhere else, “affecting the household balance” or even “a major labor problem that dates back to Brexit but has been exacerbated” by the Covid epidemic. .
For months, the United Kingdom has been recording inflation that exceeded 10 percent and social movements. On Wednesday, unprecedented strikes will be organized in 10 years, especially in education and public transportation.
**Bregret” or remorse over brexit)
Three prime ministers succeeded in Downing Street last year, and Northern Ireland is politically paralyzed, while London is trying to persuade Brussels to reconsider the status of the region after Britain’s exit from the European Union.
Despite promises to monitor borders and successive plans to combat immigration, illegal crossings of the canal are constantly increasing, having exceeded 45,000 migrants last year.
The promises of Brexiteers to restore freedom seem distant, and it is now the Bregret era: public opinion, long divided, today tends to oppose Britain’s exit from the European Union.
According to a poll conducted by the Ipsos Institute on Monday, 45 percent of Britons believe that Britain’s exit from the European Union is not going as expected – compared to only 28 percent in June 2021. While only 9 percent believe the opposite.
Conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who on Thursday marks the 100th anniversary of his arrival at Downing Street, has sought, despite everything, to defend the Brexit outcome.
“We’ve made great progress by harnessing the freedoms afforded by Brexit to raise generational challenges,” he said in a statement. “I am determined that the benefits of Brexit will continue to empower people and businesses across the country,” he added.
The statement from Downing Street stressed the “enormous opportunity” for Brexit, particularly for “the growth of the British economy”. He cites the establishment of free ports and areas considered outside the country’s customs territory and thus benefiting from soft taxes and the prospects opened up, he says, thanks to Brexit.
Labor shortage
No official celebration was planned for this anniversary. On the other hand, in Scotland, where the separatists in power denounce a “disaster”, a pro-European rally is being planned.
On January 31, 2020, the United Kingdom ended its 47-year membership in the European Union, and after Boris Johnson’s landslide election victory brought the curtain down on four years of political divisions that followed the trauma of the 2016 referendum.
Then began a nine-month transition period, with a last-minute free-trade agreement that Boris Johnson called a Christmas gift.
Three years later, the economic damage is there even if the Covid pandemic and the war in Ukraine have exacerbated the situation considerably.
According to the General Budget Forecasts, Brexit will reduce the size of the British economy by about 4% in the long run.
The UK has distanced itself from its main economic partner, from which it imports a large portion of the food it consumes. The labor shortage was exacerbated by the difficulty in bringing in European workers.
However, there is no turning back even for the Labor opposition, which is leading significantly in opinion polls less than two years after the next legislative elections.
Labor leader Keir Starmer, keen to shed his anti-Brexit past, said his platform did not call for a return to the European Union after the issue was settled, but wanted better relations with Brussels.
The Northern Ireland file continues to poison relations with Brussels. London is trying to rectify the situation after Brexit and end the political deadlock that hinders preparations for the celebration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the peace agreement with Northern Ireland. In April 1998, the agreement ended three decades of conflict.
