Brexit upheaval may discourage others

DEAR Editor, The UK has the world’s fifth largest economy as measured by nominal

GDP.

However, that single statistic does not show the relative size of the major economies. On the same measure, Japan’s economy is nearly twice the size of the UK’s, China’s five times and the USA’s seven.

The UK already trades with those countries on WTO terms and if it wants to increase trade with them, there are only a few ways it can do that – reduce tariffs from current European Union levels (that might have implications for UK industries), change standards and regulations to allow in goods that were not previously permitted, or conclude trade agreements with these countries.

With this last option, the relative size of economies becomes significant. The general rule is that larger economies can force concessions out of smaller ones. It will be interesting to see what happens once we have left the European Union.

The annual opinion survey of European Union citizens has shown an increase in support for the EU since 2016 when it had been declining for some years before that.

In recent elections, the support for Eurosceptic parties on the continent has shown a decline everywhere outside Italy.

Even the “bad boys” of the European Union, notably Hungary and Poland, do not seem inclined to leave. There is no way of proving this, but it is quite possible that the political and legal disruption we have endured in the UK since the referendum has caused people in other countries to think twice about trying to follow our lead.

Gerry McMullan, Northfield, Birmingham