Sectors from fishing to aviation, farming to science report being bogged down in red tape, struggling to recruit staff and racking up losses for the first time
On 23 June 2016, Geoffrey Betts, the managing director of a small office supplies business in Marlow, Buckinghamshire, had high hopes for his firm, and the British economy, when he voted for“I thought we would be like … ‘here we go, here we go. We are going to become the most competitive country inHis firm, Stewart Superior, has survived, but not without major restructuring and huge efforts to get around obstacles that Brexit has put in the way of the export side of the business.
Betts is “very disappointed” with the UK government. “We are not shipping anything like the amount we were. As a country, we were supposed to be out there trading with the world and yet nothing has happened except we have got a load more paperwork and we have lost lots of our business. It is completely bonkers.”
In some cases he has dispatched artworks to EU destinations only to have them sent back because customers have refused to pay VAT on arrival. For legal reasons, the same goods have had to be sent on another slow and costly journey back to the UK, meaning a big bill landing on King’s desk for an unsold, bespoke item.
Most of the trade deals with non-EU countries that the UK has signed have been small in their economic effect, and have merely been “rolled over” from identical ones when we were an EU member. Even Jacob Rees-Mogg, the minister for Brexit opportunities, has stopped talking about Brexit and the UK economy, and instead focuses on what he says is the democratic dividend, the winning back of control, and.
The Office for Budget Responsibility says Brexit will have a long-term effect of cutting UK GDP by a hefty 4%, an estimate unchanged since early 2020. Thesays such a decline amounts to £100bn in lost output, and £40bn less revenue to the Treasury a year. The UK is now behind all the other G7 nations in the pace of its recovery from the pandemic, with exports by UK small businesses to the EU down significantly.
It was just that the rich fruits of Brexit were not yet there to savour because “in its utter incompetence, the Tory government has failed to take much advantage so far, with a few exceptions such as being able to do our own earlier vaccine rollout and some trade deals”.and Wakefield byelections suggest that behind the “red wall” and “blue wall” the electoral benefits of saying Johnson “got Brexit done” are not what they were.
Sarah Ready of the New Under Ten Fishermen’s Association, whose boats are under 10 metres long, said red tape had been increasing since the Brexit vote, and they now faced extra hurdles selling their catches. Last week the chief executive of easyJet, Johan Lundgren, contradicted claims by the aviation minister Robert Courts that it was “not likely” Brexit had caused staff shortages which have led to disruption at airports. Lundgren countered that 8,000 job applications from EU citizens had been rejected by his firm because candidates did not have permission to work in the UK.
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