So far, Boris Johnson has managed to hide the costs of Brexit pretty well. Under the guise of the corona pandemic, the consequences of leaving the EU were relatively easy to hide. Nobody could say exactly what part one or the other had in the recent economic crash. That was fine with the British Prime Minister. But that’s over now. Since the first time an independent UK authority made a clear comparison, it is difficult even for Johnson’s government to deny, which is becoming increasingly clear in everyday life: Brexit will hit the British economy much harder than the pandemic.
If you want to know exactly, you can Office for Budget Responsibility report read, the result of the investigation is unmistakable in any case. Because of the pandemic, British economic output is expected to collapse by two percent in the long term. During the same period, Brexit is expected to reduce gross domestic product by four percent – i.e. twice as much. There are of course all kinds of uncertainties, but the economists’ conclusion is clear.
Since Johnson signed the trade agreement with the EU almost a year ago and thus sealed Brexit, it has become increasingly clear how much the British economy is suffering as a result. In any case, the government’s plan does not work. After almost all corona restrictions had fallen in July, the economy should be able to develop fully again. But nothing came of it. In the months following the Freedom Day showed that growth is far lower than the government forecast. UK exports to the EU in particular are still at a fairly low level compared to exports to other parts of the world.
The situation on the job market is dire, there is a shortage of people everywhere
The reason is obvious, even if Johnson and his ministerial ranks still claim that Brexit has nothing to do with it. Quite simply because what cannot be to blame can not be. There is still a government in London that is closing its eyes and ears, even if the companies still say so clearly that they cannot cope with the consequences of Brexit.
The situation on the labor market is particularly dire. Around 200,000 EU citizens left the UK last year alone. Now they are missing, especially those who did jobs that many Britons feel too good to do. For example, slaughter pigs. Because there are no longer enough butchers in Great Britain, slaughtered animals are now exported to the EU for processing and packaging. After that, the meat comes back to the UK.
The government in London reacted in its own way: only when it saw no way out did it offer work visas. In the case of butchers, there are 800 in number, but limited to six months. It is like the visas for truck drivers, which are urgently needed in the UK: foreigners are supposed to secure Christmas for the British, they are supposed to give them gifts and ingredients for that Christmas dinner deliver – once the work is done, they have to disappear again.
This labor market policy may help with short-term bottlenecks, but it does not offer companies what they really need: planning security. Sure, the time when British companies could hire as many cheap workers from Eastern Europe as they wanted in the EU internal market is over. But the government’s notion that locals will take over these jobs if companies pay them higher wages is not a long-term strategy. One consequence of the numerous bottlenecks is already foreseeable: The prices for food are rising.
When Johnson and his ministers are asked about these and other Brexit consequences, they always claim that this is all a global problem, not a specifically British one. And if someone denies that, they sometimes blame the French customs controls or even “the EU” for it. Johnson will this Blame game keep playing. For him there is only one criterion: his voters have to tell him his half-truths. So the question is how much longer will they believe Johnson’s excuses?