Like most populist things, Brexit has been a disaster. Populism itself is usually a disaster. Politicians tell the population what they want to hear, regardless whether or not it's true. Whenever I go to the UK, all I hear is lament that the UK left the EU.
Eight years after the referendum, it is safe to say Britain has a serious case of “Bregret.” About 65% of Brits say that, in hindsight, leaving the EU was wrong. Just 15% say the benefits have so far outweighed the costs.
In the years since 2016, Britain’s economy has slowed to a crawl, growing an average 1.3% versus 1.6% for the G-7 group of rich countries overall. By putting up barriers to trade and migration with its biggest trading partner, Brexit slowed trade and hurt business investment.
“I’m angry,” says Steve Jackson, a burly taxi driver and part-time construction worker in Boston, a town of 70,000 in eastern England. ... many people here who backed Brexit feel betrayed. Jackson said that none of the promises made by politicians who lobbied for Brexit have come true: higher wages, cheaper food and energy, more money for healthcare, and less immigration. “We’ve been lied to—lock, stock and barrel.”
Goldman Sachs estimates that the British economy is 5% smaller than it otherwise would have been without Brexit, ... The National Institute of Economic and Social Research, a U.K. think tank, estimated that Brexit has resulted in a lost annual income per capita of £850 (over $1,000) since 2020. ...
Life in Boston meanwhile hasn’t noticeably improved, he adds. “We have achieved nothing,” he says. “You learn what you already knew: That politicians are liars.”
“If you think about Britain’s big problems, Brexit solved none of them: the crumbling public services, weak economic growth, a shortfall of housing and a need to modernize the energy infrastructure,” says John Springford, an economist at the Centre for European Reform think tank in London.
Populism sucks.
www.niesr.ac.uk
obr.uk
www.covidrecoveryindex.org
