Worse than feared': Brexit to blame for 33bn loss to UK economy, study shows

[edhopper]

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-cost-uk-gdp-economy-failure-b2246610.html

Brexit has cost the UK a staggering £33bn in lost trade and investment, according to a new study that found that the economic damage is even worse than previously feared.

Research by the Centre for European Reform (CER), shared with The Independent, shows that Britain’s economy is 5.5 per cent smaller than it would have been if the country had remained inside the EU.

The UK’s goods trade is 7 per cent lower and investment is 11 per cent lower than it would have been had the Remain campaign won the 2016 Brexit referendum, according to the think tank’s analysis.

The UK had the best deal in the whole EU, but "national pride" was worth screwing themselves for too many. Bravo, you wankers. Keep voting for thr Tories.

[RockRaven]

1. And the majority of voters will still blame immigrants and Labour for their economic woes...

(this comment in no way defends anything about the Labour Party)

[inthewind21]

2. Gee

Who could have predicted this?

[moondust]

3. How much

have Farage and his pals personally pocketed thanks to getting rid of all those EU rules and regulations?

[Grins]

11. And Putin. NM

[ananda]

21. Yes, Russia has played a big part in UK politics.

nt

[Emrys]

4. Yet no party with a chance of holding power will campaign to address this:

the Tories because they invested so much in their lies and promises that had no chance of coming to fruition that they can't back down, and any Tory leader making moves toward that would face a rancorously split party and probably be deposed, and Labour because Keir Starmer is so craven in trying to win over those who voted for Brexit that he's ruled out any serious attempt to re-establish closer links with the EU and claims Labour just wants to "make Brexit work".

The sticking point is freedom of movement of people (within certain parameters, we're not talking about a borderless free-for-all), one of the EU's core four freedoms. Unless they accept that, there's very little than can be done to improve trade with our closest neighbours and overcome the barriers the Tories have erected.

[Cha]

5. What were they Thinking!?

I remember when it was happening.. we so didn't want it to.

[Emrys]

7. IIRC, after the vote, we British DUers had to spend a week or so explaining to some other DUers

(I think quite a few of whom have left by now), at length and sometimes quite heatedly, that it was a disastrous outcome and no good would come of it.

We had to caucus in the UK Group for mutual support because it was so exhausting and stressful!

[Cha]

9. Wow.. I had no idea.. well

as you can tell.. I was on your side.

And I can imagine how exhausting & stressful.. I've had to do that in private groups Over others reasons.. politically speaking.

[Emrys]

13. It was tough, annoying, and a bit surprising at times.

If there was a way to easily delve back in the posts in the UK Group, our huddles will no doubt still be there. Advanced site search for June-July 2016 shows up some of the posts depending on the keywords you use.

There were a substantial number, who were quite outspoken, who cheered for the result, mainly framing it as "a blow against neoliberalism" or having bought in to propaganda against the EU spread by the likes of Boris Johnson over the years. (The EU's obviously not perfect, but no polity is, and the UK's has certainly deteriorated since 2016!)

Sometimes there's no joy in saying, "I told you so."

[Cha]

15. "NeoLiberalism".. oh god!

yeah, I imagine many of them are gone.

I see Boris is still kicking around surviving Partygate.. does he have anything to say about what Brexit has done to the UK?

[Emrys]

16. I did find one UK Group post from the day of the result that will give a taste

of what we were up against. I don't think any of the more outspoken DU pro-Brexiters that posted on the thread linked below are still around - no point in deliberately embarrassing anyone after so long.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/108810289

If you want to bother to read it, you'll see that neoliberalism raised its head again, to which we had to point out that it wasn't a EU invention, but stemmed largely from the Reagan-Thatcher years (it's not explicitly set out in that thread, but most of the issues Leavers complained about in the EU were championed by Thatcher and her swinging handbag, so they ended up hating what their heroine had fashioned and blaming anybody else but her for it all).

Boris ... I don't think it's a good idea to get me started at this time of night. Maybe another time!

[Scrivener7]

18. This place was crawling with right-wing trolls in 2016. And they seem to have

polluted every corner.

And sadly, in that year, they won every fight in the real world.

And now we reap the results.

[Cha]

24. Thank you for

the explanations and the link, Emrys.

I wish you all the best. and that's ok about not talking about BJ.

[yardwork]

20. I hadn't read this thread before I posted my comment downthread.

I remember it well, and I remember realizing that it was propaganda being spread on DU. It started before the Brexit vote, too. Eerily similar talking points.

I first noticed it when Russia invaded Crimea. There were a perplexingly large number of DUers supporting Russia, using the same nationalist talking points. They weren't all newbies, either. It was the first time I detected the influence of centralized, intentional pro-Russia propaganda being spread across the internet. It gathered steam for Brexit and then the 2016 US elections.

[Emrys]

22. A lot of people on DU point the finger at Putin very readily.

Brexit was brewing for many years, and a lot of the propaganda was initially UK home-grown. You can trace it back to Boris Johnson, who as a "journalist", discovered that he could please his RW bosses and readership by making up ridiculous stories about EU legislation, or twist how that legislation was presented.

Another important factor was US interference from the Mercers and their allies.

Putin and the Mercers were pushing at an open door by the time the crunch came.

As someone who's been very active in the peace movement in my past and who's moved in lefty circles in the UK, I'm afraid a lot of the more vocal "pacifist", "left-wing" world view tends to be (over-)critical of US and NATO influence in world affairs and blind, sometimes wilfully so, to the conduct and motivations of other state actors, like Russia. Back in the 1980s, we used to be accused of being useful idiots for the Soviet Union and in its pay, when for most of us, that was far from true. So I'm reluctant to buy wholesale into focusing on those influences and motivations nowadays. Our problems in these respects are homegrown. If we solely blame other outside parties for them, we have less scope for countering them.

[yardwork]

23. I've seen the same in the U.S. Propaganda only works on fertile ground.

The sources of problems are complex, and humans tend to like simple answers.

[Cosmocat]

27. Wow

I mean ... pretty clear to me that it was going to fuck Britain royally.

[Eyeball_Kid]

6. It was Putin's dream come true. He worked hard to get Brexit passed.

Now the Tories will make up any excuse to cover their mistake. 33 billion is a big mistake. And it's not over yet.

[Turbineguy]

8. Farage.

Why do people believe him and the trumps of the World?

[Richard D]

10. It's really too bad . . .

. . that no one ever warned them. Oh, nevermind.

[FlyingPiggy]

14. Pure karma. They were amply warned.

[yardwork]

19. The response to Brexit here on DU showed that we were being infiltrated and manipulated.

I had been on DU a long time and seen (and participated in) plenty of flame wars. The response to Brexit was something else and foretold the troll inundation during the 2015-6 presidential primaries.

Brexit was an obviously terrible idea, but DU was full of posters spouting identical bizarre talking points about what a marvelous thing this was for Britain.

[Sky Jewels]

25. It's okay -- that's a small price to pay to pwn the left-libs-labour louts.

[Just A Box Of Rain]

26. Only the Liberal-Democrats (as a party) and the SNP stood foursquare

against Brexit.

The shameful tenure of Jeremy Corbyn, a lifelong Eurosceptic, resulted in such tepid support for Remain (along with supporting the idea of a referendum) that many in Labour embraced their worst nativist-populist impulses.

The Tories didn't do this alone.

[enid602]

28. Empire

And all the while Wales, N Ireland and Scotland inch toward independence, and Nigeria is asking for a return of the Bronzes of Benin. What is to become of Britain? Maybe Kate Middleton will get some new hats.

[Aussie105]

29. There were good reasons why the UK joined the EU in the first place.

Those were swept under the carpet.

Granddaughter left Australia for greener pastures in the UK.

Not liking it, too cold, everything too expensive, says she may come back soon.