Face up to reality: we must delay Brexit

A NEW report produced by the Social Market Foundation for the cross-party group Best for Britain shows that any change to our trade relationship with Europe during the Covid-19 recession will hurt the UK economy very badly.

The report makes very alarming reading. Most sectors of the economy will be hit to a moderatesevere extent in the medium-long term by Covid-19 alone. This is on top of predicted both short and long run economic impacts of

Brexit, ranging from a mediumsized negative impact with our government’s currently proposed Free Trade Agreement (FTA) deal to a large negative impact if we leave without a deal and trade on World Trade Organisation (WTO) terms.

Even with an FTA deal, most UK regions are expected to suffer a

4-6% long-term negative economic effect of Brexit, increasing to 6-10% or more under WTO terms. In both cases, North East, North West, West Midlands and Northern Ireland regions will be worst affected.

But these predictions are for Brexit alone, without taking into account Covid-19 which is predicted by various organisations and models to reduce UK GDP by between 6.5 and 12.8% over this year, with the more recent forecasts showing the economy not returning to 2019 levels for another two years or so.

Most forecasts can’t see a return to anything like the pre-Covid-19 GDP trajectory in the foreseeable future.

The combined effects of Covid-19 and Brexit are complex and vary between sectors of the economy depending both on what kind of Brexit deal, if any, we end up with. But whatever the shape of the post-Covid recovery, the report says that “ending the transition period on December 31 2020 is likely to suppress growth further”.

Most of us have now accepted that Brexit is done and we cannot stop it. But surely you don’t need to have been a ‘Remainer’ to realise that there just isn’t time to deal with both the effects of Covid-19 and Brexit by the end of this year without crashing out either with a very bad deal or with none at all - an outcome almost universally predicted to be somewhere between highly undesirable and disastrous economically.

So come on government, it’s time to bite the bullet, face up to reality and accept the EU’s offer of a delay to Brexit, at least until we have sorted out the financial consequences of Covid-19.

Dr Francis Kirkham Nymet Rowland, Mid Devon