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Brexit 'costing the UK economy £100 billion' a year

CHRISTCHURCH, DORSET - MAY 12:  Boris Johnson speaks as he visits Reidsteel, a Christchurch company backing the Leave Vote on the 23rd June 2016. on May 12, 2016 in Christchurch, Dorset. The Vote Leave battle bus has been touring the South West of England hoping to persuade voters to back a Brexit from the European Union in the Referendum  (Photo by Matt Cardy/Getty Images)
Boris Johnson said Brexit would put millions of pounds back into the pockets of UK voters. Photo: Matt Cardy/Getty (Matt Cardy via Getty Images)

Brexit has caused a £100bn-a-year loss in output, leaving Britain’s economy 4% smaller than it would have been inside the bloc, according to according to Bloomberg Economics.

Since officially leaving the European Union, three-years ago this week, UK-based investment has grown 19% less than the G7 average and the economy has forfeited 4% worth of growth, the analysis showed.

“Did the UK commit an act of economic self-harm when it voted to leave the EU in 2016? The evidence so far still suggests it did,” Bloomberg economists Ana Andrade and Dan Hanson, said.

“The main takeaway is that the rupture from the single market may have impacted the British economy faster than we, or most other forecasters, expected,” they added.

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The underperformance is partly explained by business investment as firms put spending decisions on hold because of uncertainty about what life outside the EU would mean.

Read more: UK manufacturing shrinks for sixth month in a row as inflation bites

Brexit also had a negative impact on the ability of companies to hire workers.

But prime minister Rishi Sunak insisted the UK made “huge strides” in harnessing the freedoms unlocked by Brexit to tackle generational challenges.

“And in my first 100 days as prime minister, that momentum hasn’t slowed – we’re cutting red tape for businesses, levelling up through our freeports, and designing our own, fairer farming system to protect the British countryside,” he said.

Anti-Brexit protester Steve Bray stands outside Lancaster House in London, Monday, Jan. 9, 2023. (Victoria Jones/PA via AP)
Brexit is a ‘complete disaster’ and ‘total lies’ a leading City figure said. Photo: Victoria Jones/PA via AP) (ASSOCIATED PRESS)

According to the polling expert John Curtice, on average polls now suggest that 57% people in the UK would vote to rejoin the EU.

Guy Hands, founder and chairman of private equity firm Terra Firma, said the only way Brexit could have worked was a “Liz Truss utopia” of complete deregulation and privatisation.

“It’s been a complete disaster. The reality is, it’s been a lose-lose situation for us and Europe,” Hands told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. “The reality of Brexit was, it was just was a bunch of complete and total lies.”

Read more: Bank of England set to raise interest rates to 4%

“The only way that the Brexit put forward by Boris Johnson was going to work was if there was a complete deregulation of the UK and we moved to a sort of Liz Truss utopia of a Singapore state and that was just never going to happen,” he added.

On January 31, 2020, the United Kingdom ended 47 years of belonging to the European Union and its predecessor, the EEC, soon after Boris Johnson won a resounding election victory for the Conservatives with his promise to "get Brexit done".

Watch: Boris Johnson tries to shut down Brexit 'gloom mongering'

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