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One by one, the supposed pillars of the economic argument for Brexit have been beaten by the realities. Far from being linked to a corpse, as some Brexiters described the EU economy, both the euro zone and the EU have grown faster than the VK since the 2016 referendum. The export of Great Britain has been notified compared to the rest of the G7.
“Look at services,” Brexiters cry. Their export growth has been exceptionalAccording to policy exchange, the right -hand think tank. The office for budget responsibility also noted a year ago that the trade growth of the British services had been The strongest in the G7.
Do we have to be happy that the British trade in services has performed well? Was this the result of Brexit? The short answers are “no” and “no”. Instead, we must be irritated that the export of services has not become even more and Brexit blamed this disappointment, according to New research from the London School of Economics.
Before explaining the findings, it is important to note that although the British economy has many weaknesses, services is a strength. Although television teams always want to propose industries such as production or fish to visually describe what makes a country rich, this is not relevant for 80 percent of the economic activity of Great Britain. The success of the UK lies in its lawyers, information providers, creative types, management consultants and educators. For example, a handful of universities generates more export income than the entire fishing industry.
Unusual for every economy, the export of the British services exceeds that of goods and not by a trivial amount – almost 40 percent higher In 2024 with the gap that is getting bigger. However, the OBR noted that not all exports of the UK services seemed equally strong. Business services, including management advice and research and advertisements-, where Brexit barriers were small or non-existent, grew strongly. Other services did not perform so well, including Finance and Transport, where the barriers founded by leaving the internal market were considerable. But the fiscal watchdog left his analysis on.
Picking up the baton has been left to LSE -Team economists Shania Bhalotia, Swati Dhingra and Danyal Arnold. With the help of data that made a comparison of the growth in services in different sectors and between a large number of couples of countries possible, they investigated how strong the export of British services in each sector was compared to all other countries. They also carefully investigated the UK-Handel and Collaboration Agreement to document the export of services to the EU with new barriers after the deal after the Brexit came into force in 2021.
The results are grim. The OBR was immediately on brand that the export of British services with new Brexit barriers seemed to perform worse. UK export to countries with larger barriers was hit much harder. Where the most extreme barriers were introduced, the export of services fell by 90 percent. On average, there was a decrease of 16 percent in exporting services to the EU in sectors where Brexit imposed new trade rushes compared to the bilateral trade between other countries in the same sectors.
Has Brexit British companies permitted to concentrate on trade with the US and other countries? Again, the answer was “no”. In general, the study showed that five years after the Brexit exporting British services were 4 to 5 percent lower than they would have been without the effect of new trade rush.
In a nation that has difficulty accepting his relative economic decline since the Brexit, we have been way too fast to celebrate the better performance of services. Instead of showing that Brexit may have some advantages, it simply shows that the UK had specialized in the right industry at the right time, so that many world -class companies can sell worldwide. Instead of generating “Global Groot -Britain”, leaving the EU has had one simple effect: economic damage. Without Brexit they would have done even better.
