London Mayor Sadiq Khan on Thursday will blame Brexit for costing the UK economy £140 billion ($178 billion), calling on the government to “urgently” rebuild relations with the European Union to stem the decline.

Britain’s EU divorce has also meant there are 2 million fewer jobs nationwide than there otherwise would have been, including 290,000 lost positions in London, according to research by Cambridge Econometrics commissioned by City Hall that the Labour Party’s Khan will reference in a speech at Mansion House. Half of the total job losses are in financial services and construction.

“The hard-line version of Brexit we’ve ended up with is dragging our economy down and pushing up the cost of living,” Khan will say, according to excerpts released by his office. “The cost of Brexit crisis can only be solved if we take a mature approach and if we are open to improving our trading arrangements with our European neighbors.”

  • @june
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    1511 months ago

    Is there anyone that’s still defending brexit and calling it a good thing?

    • Seeker of Carcosa
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      2211 months ago

      My bootlicking family, who insists “we got our country back” but refuses to elaborate when I ask basic questions such as “from whom? How? What has materially changed?”

      • @june
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        1011 months ago

        Ok, so the same type that argue that trump was the best president we’ve ever had but can’t point to a single reason why.

        • @EnderMB
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          1511 months ago

          Funny enough, an article came out after the Brexit vote called “The Sociology of Brexit”, where they detailed why people voted for it. It was basically because London is responsible for our entire economy, leading to large parts of the country having few jobs, no industry, and the government largely not giving a fuck. In their minds, things couldn’t get any worse, so they didn’t care that experts were saying “it’ll ruin the economy”, because the economy hasn’t helped them out at all.

          Why I distinctly remember that article is because it predicted that the exact same thing was likely to happen in America, and that Trump would win the presidency. Usually, UK politics is a good 10-20 years behind America, but it’s something that translated directly across the atlantic.

    • @EnderMB
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      811 months ago

      Nigel Garage made it to third place in I’m A Celeb. There are a lot of thick flag-shaggers out there that still have their head in the sand.