Six years after the UK voted to leave the EU, Britain’s economy lags far behind its European rivals.
Per capita income has risen 3.8% in real terms since the second quarter of 2016, when the vote was taken, compared to growth of 8.5% in the EU, according to figures from the Organization for Cooperation and Development economic.
The difference has become more pronounced since the UK officially left the EU in January 2020, a period which also coincided with the emergence of Covid-19. The UK and EU have been hit hard by the pandemic, but the EU’s recovery has been more robust. In the last quarter of 2021, UK GDP per capita was 0.2% lower than before the pandemic. Those of the EU, on the other hand, had increased by 1.5%.
A report by the Resolution Foundation think tank yesterday (June 22) found that Brexit had hurt the UK’s competitiveness, reducing productivity growth and eroding real wage growth. Jacob Rees-Mogg, the Brexit opportunities minister, called the report a “regurgitation of Project Fear”, and said HuffPost that the government had not planned to undertake economic assessments to find out whether Brexit was a success.
[See also: Is Brexit to blame for the UK’s extra inflation?]
This post has been updated to reflect a later revision of the OECD PPP estimates.
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