#Brexit delivered 5% blow to UK economy and yet politicians still offer no hope of an exit from Brexit! ⬇️ Britain’s economy is 5% smaller than it would have been if the country had chosen to stay in the EU. ⬇️A sharp hit to UK goods trade, weaker business investment and a steep increase in non-EU migrants coming to Britain, who study rather than work, have held back economic growth. ⬇️Analysts at the American investment bank said that “the UK has significantly underperformed other advanced economies since the 2016 EU referendum, with lower growth and higher inflation”. ⬇️It estimated that since 2016, consumer prices had leapt 🔺 by 31% in Britain. In the USA and the eurozone they had increased by 27% and 24% respectively, it said. ⬇️Greater trade frictions had raised the cost of goods exchange, putting upward pressure on prices, Goldman said. The bank’s experts said their “analysis shows that lower EU immigration has likely played a role in exacerbating labour market tightness and thus contributed to the UK’s higher inflation rates since 2016. ⬇️ “EU immigrants tended to have high labour market participation rates, as many of them entered the UK specifically to work. By contrast, many recent arrivals are students, meaning that immigration may be playing less of a role in boosting labour supply than the headline numbers suggest.” ⬇️Since the vote to leave the EU, the volume of European citizens travelling to Britain has plummeted. However, this reduction had been outpaced by a leap in non-EU migration to the UK, taking total net migration in 2022 to a record 745,000. Last month the Office for National Statistics said that net migration would contribute to raising the UK population to 74 million by 2036. ⬇️Although the change in migration flows had contributed to short-term inflationary pressures, Goldman said that a bigger share of migrants now coming to Britain were highly skilled, which would “have some long-run benefits in terms of boosting productivity”. ⬇️Investment levels since 2016 had been “weak”, Goldman said, thanks to “prolonged uncertainty around the ultimate form of Brexit”. Nevertheless, the bank’s analysts noted that “with this uncertainty now largely resolved, some of the weakness of investment might reverse, consistent with stronger investment in recent quarters”. ⬇️Economists have highlighted that Britain’s economic growth rate has slowed markedly since the 2008 global financial crisis as a result of meagre productivity improvements. These have been attributed to a slowdown in private and public sector investment. And @CharlesTannock your tweet made it to the @thetimes 👏 thetimes.co.uk/article/2637e… – at South West, England