The British are looking gray two years after Brexit, according to several opinion polls carried out on this subject in recent weeks.
The latest, published on January 1 by The Independent, reveals that almost two thirds of the population across the Channel is now… in favor of a referendum on a return to the EU.
According to the newspaper, "the majority of voters (56%, editor's note) now think that (Brexit) has worsened" the economic situation across the Channel – against 44% a year ago.
It is true that several indicators of the British economy have turned red in recent months: UK GDP fell by 0.3% in the third quarter of 2022, inflation exceeded 10% and even peaked at 11.1% year on year in October, causing a severe crisis in the cost of living.
This economic "situation of weakness" in the United Kingdom can be explained "in the short term" as a consequence of Brexit, according to Catherine Coron, lecturer in British civilization at the University of Paris-Panthéon-Assas: "If we look Inflation from the UK and the US - another liberal economy - there's a 2% difference, which is huge. And while UK GDP is stagnating, US GDP is picking up."
Added to this are the difficulties encountered by companies across the Channel to operate with new rules.
The exit of the United Kingdom from the EU has led to the return of border controls, customs checks or even import duties... New rules which have also meant more administrative paperwork for entrepreneurs who import -export.
This situation is not without consequences: exports of British products to the EU fell by 30% in 2021, according to researchers from the London School of Economics.
The latter believe that the Brexit agreement which entered into force on January 1, 2021 "has increased the fixed costs of exporting to the EU, which has pushed small exporters out of small EU markets" - so that the big British companies have been little or not hampered for their exports.
A Brexit that has already cost more than seven billion dollars
"Brexit also has an impact on basic necessities, with shortages in the agricultural sector, in particular fruit and vegetables", explains Aurélien Antoine, professor of law at the Jean-Monnet University of Saint-Étienne and director of the Brexit Observatory.
The National Farmers' Union – the main agricultural union across the Channel – also warned in early December of a risk of a “food supply crisis” in the United Kingdom.
The exit from the EU has indeed complicated the hiring of European workers on whom the agricultural sector relied, and some producers have seen some of their crops rot on their feet, for lack of arms to harvest them.
To complete the black picture, the City was overtaken for the first time last November by the Paris Stock Exchange in market capitalization.
"This is the biggest consequence of Brexit: the London business district is no longer the leading financial center in Europe", notes Catherine Coron.
Although the overall cost of Brexit is difficult to assess – several factors affect the British economy (and European economies), including the Covid-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine – studies have been carried out on the subject.
One, produced by the Center for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics, revealed in early December that leaving the EU had already "cost UK consumers a total of £5.8 billion (7 .11 billion)" over the period 2019-2021, adding "an average of 210 pounds to household food bills".
“Economic uncertainty” yesterday… and tomorrow
Brexit, although it has many disadvantages for the British economy, has also been beneficial to the United Kingdom, to a lesser extent, on several points, according to Aurélien Antoine: "It has led to less competition in several sectors, in particular the agricultural sector. The scarcity of foreign labor has also enabled British unions to negotiate wage increases (especially for truck drivers, editor's note)."
But these few positive signs do not succeed in offsetting the uncertainty that Brexit has cast over the British economy since the start.
"The reason why the United Kingdom is really very bad, and the consequences of Brexit even stronger, is that there has been a lot of economic uncertainty since the referendum (in June 2016)", analyzes Catherine Coron .
"Between that moment and the moment when Brexit was really enacted, we had a very long time. Economic agents on the markets – who need to anticipate – could not project themselves because they did not know where the British economy."
The British economy seems for the moment to be permanently affected – in the short and medium term – by Brexit.
Moreover, the economic outlook of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) does not encourage optimism for the next two years: according to it, the United Kingdom should be the least efficient country among the major world economies – apart from Russia – with a forecast GDP down 0.4% in 2023 and up 0.2% in 2024.
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