Weekend reading: Harping on about Brexit, 10th anniversary edition
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Pedant alert(!): It is indeed a decade since the Referendum was held, but the UK officially ceased to be a Member State of the EU in Jan 2020, and then there was a transition period, during which the UK was treated like a Member State, until 2021. I appreciate the spirit of the article, but we should keep in mind that it’s only been about 5-6 years since the full changes actually came into effect. So the first half of your timeline shows the effects of preparing to leave EU, not being outside EU legislation and the single market. Of course, you could argue that this initial period was still just as damaging.
@Mirror Man — True enough. To be honest though I think those years were probably even worse for the UK economy, since the chaos and uncertainty effectively threw businesses into paralysis, or else making choices just in case (e.g. investing in Paris or Frankfurt instead, at the margin). Political distraction in the mix, too.
We also have plenty of the costs front-loaded in the earlier years, too (e.g. the beginning of starting to create duplicate functions for stuff that wouldn’t be done by the EU, setting up new border arrangements) although that would have created some economic activity.
These things are taken into account of course in detail by the OBR, Goldman, and the several others who’ve modelled counterfactual stronger economies if we hadn’t have Brexited.
Just to add, it looks as though ‘Wankernomics by James Schloeffel’ is actually £7.49 on Kindle.
@Hapshade — Ack, thanks. It definitely was 99p a couple of weeks ago, it must have been a time-limited deal. Copy amended!
At the risk of adding another Guardian link, I think this is worth a read too: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jun/12/spacex-ipo-elon-musk-trillionaire
It is fairly damning.
It was a stupid idea then and it’s still a stupid idea but I have no idea how we get out of it. I’ve genuinely felt like I’m living in 1930s Germany this week. It frightens me and makes me sad. Yet teflon frog face (insulting to frogs, I know), comes out smelling of roses and in line to be PM in 2029. He should have been arrested for incitement to violence this week but NO – we don’t get that lucky.
While Labour have squandered their majority – even if we all know they were handed the poison chalice & probably had little chance of avoiding drinking it.
Although it is a decade since the vote, you have to remember that it took Parliament almost 5 years to reach the exit deal. An awful lot of the lost returns ought to be put at the politicians door. This article certainly helped refresh my memory of those awful years
https://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/constitution-unit/2020/06/14/brexit-and-parliament-where-did-it-all-go-wrong/