Cost of Brexit rises as all else falls

The momentum to reverse Brexit is steadily building as the economic suicide the UK is currently committing becomes clearer, writes executive member Alex Orr.

Former Tory former minister, Tobias Ellwood, to his immense credit, recently suggested the UK should rejoin the EU single market to ease the cost-of-living crisis, claiming recent polling suggests “this is not the Brexit most people imagined”.

Research by the Centre for European Reform (CER) has now highlighted that Brexit is a major contributor to the economy’s slowing, while other countries had bounced back from Covid . The Tory defence that the negative economic impact was due to Covid-19 has now been shot to pieces.

The CER notes that Brexit has cost the UK economy billions of pounds in lost trade, lost investment and lost tax revenues. It estimates that the economy was 5.2% – £31bn – smaller by the end of last year than it would have been had the UK had stayed in the EU.

This is money the country could really do with at a time of rising national debt and falling living standards.

A smaller economy also means that taxes have to rise to fund the same quality of public services that we had before, which is the backdrop to the Chancellor’s decision to raise the overall tax burden to levels that we haven’t seen since the 1940s.

The catastrophic economic damage that is being caused by Brexit is clear, and there is no shame in the government admitting this and being strong enough to correct it.

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