15 February 2019

The Guardian: Cost of Brexit to UK economy running at £40bn a year – Bank rate-setter

Gertjan Vlieghe, a member of the Bank’s monetary policy committee, said that since the vote in June 2016, the economy had lost about 2% of GDP compared with a scenario where there had been no significant domestic economic events.

The cost to Britain is currently £40bn a year, or about £800m a week of lost income, he said. Since the referendum, the UK’s economic growth has slowed while the rest of the world has recorded one of its strongest periods for growth of the past decade.

Vlieghe’s estimate for the weekly cost of Brexit so far is more than double the £350m the Leave campaign claimed could be saved on EU membership fees and instead spent on the NHS. The claim, emblazoned on the side of the campaign’s battlebus, became a key focus for debate in the run-up to the vote.

Vlieghe said in London on Thursday: “That 2% of GDP is not trivial, that’s £40bn or if you prefer it in bus units, it’s £800m a week.”

The Bank has calculated that the cumulative total of lost GDP since 23 June 2016 is £55bn.

He said business investment in Britain had been stuck around zero, with a drop of 3.7% in 2018, despite an upswing worth about 6% annually in the rest of the G7. Consumer spending also slowed as households came under pressure from higher prices, sparked by the sharp fall in the value of the pound straight after the Brexit vote. [...]

Full article on The Guardian

© The Guardian