Brit here. I left the UK in large part due to Brexit. Luckily I've so far had professional enough employment overseas (Germany) that I am able to do so, but I feel terrible for the 20 year olds back home who don't have skills and who can't just bugger off and wash dishes in Europe like I did when I was their age. Others?
GDP is a terrible indicator of a country's real wealth. Of course Britain's economic output fell after Brexit - it's trading less with the EU! That doesn't mean the UK is poorer or has "cost" them anything. Sadiq Khan is constantly making bold, unsubstantial statements like this - definitely a politician for the Twitter era.
<i>> "Khan, a member of the opposition Labour Party, which voted against Brexit in a 2016 referendum, based his statement on a report he commissioned from economic consultants Cambridge Econometrics, who estimated how fast the economy would have grown if Britain had voted to stay in the EU."</i><p>So a made up prediction that he paid for. That's not very convincing given that self-proclaimed economic experts also confidently predicted:<p>- 500k-800k job losses in an immediate recession following the vote if Leave won<p>- A loss of trade with the EU upon leaving the single market<p>... neither of which actually happened. The economy grew after the vote, and today the ratio of EU to non-EU trade the UK engages in hasn't changed from before Brexit, which strongly implies the single market was actually useless for Britain in the end.
I can understand the motives of Brexit supporters, even though I believe the campaign to leave was itself a massive hack. What I cannot understand is how poorly Brexit was handled. One would think that such a drastic change should take 10 years or more to prepare for.
"However, Labour Party leader Keir Starmer has been cautious about giving details of how he would strengthen ties with the EU."<p>This Omerta on talking about Brexit is ridiculous. As leader of the opposition, why not try representing the opposing views of the population?
This is the cost of leaving behind a critical mass of people from the gains of globalization.<p>Everyone is worse off, including the poor who voted for this, but they would have some amount of schadenfreude against the rich who are more worse off as a percentage.
Related discussion a few weeks ago:<p><i>Brexit has failed for UK, say clear majority of Britons – poll</i><p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38817190">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38817190</a>