After covid-19, Brexit’s impact on the British economy will be clearer
Nov 8th 2021
DISENTANGLING THE economic impact of Brexit from that of the covid-19 pandemic is not straightforward. Britain’s final exit from its transitional membership of the European Single Market and Customs Union finally occurred in January 2021. Exports to and imports from the European Union duly collapsed. But with the country then in the midst of its third national lockdown it was hard to say which factor was more important. Over the course of 2022 the impact of the pandemic will, with luck, begin to fade. But the consequences of Brexit will still be felt.
Britain’s macroeconomic story in the latter half of 2021 was unusually straightforward: economic demand recovered faster than supply and the results were shortages, bottlenecks and inflation. Stock levels at both retailers and manufacturers fell to multi-decade lows and firms across a wide range of…
