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.”

  • Obinice
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    7511 months ago

    Okay but think of all those millions we were sending to the EU that can now be spent on the NHS!

    Just like the bus said! Right guys?

    Guys?

    • @[email protected]
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      11 months ago

      Just think of all the trade agreements Britain has made now that it can independently negotiate! Why, the FTA with Australia alone increased GDP by checks notes 0.08%. Wait, that can’t be right. Surely the British public weren’t misled about any of this?

      • @Custoslibera
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        1311 months ago

        You know what’s closer to the UK than Australia?

        Literally any European country.

        In fact you can just drive goods into Britain from Europe or put them on a train instead of shipping/flying it from literally the other side of the world.

    • @fluxion
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      2611 months ago

      And you can have those deregulated pillows you’ve always dreamed about.

  • XIIIesq
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    6211 months ago

    That’s over £2000 for every man woman and child in the UK.

    I want to be outraged, but I’m so politically fatigued.

  • Optional
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    4011 months ago

    £140 billion ($178 billion) so far

  • @friend_of_satan
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    2511 months ago

    In the words of my ex, “I thought it would’ve been bigger.”

  • @[email protected]
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    2011 months ago

    I wonder if anyone learned anything. I wonder if the people who did learn anything learned the more general case of “conservatives have bad ideas”

    • verysoft
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      11 months ago

      Its funny because they started it from a conservative trying to prove the people wont do it. Said conservative then resigned when people went ahead and did it.

      • @wiccan2
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        1011 months ago

        Said Conservative has also been rewarded for all of this by being made a lord.

  • @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.

  • @[email protected]
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    1211 months ago

    Can anyone explain how this increased the cost of living other than companies being greedy?

    • @[email protected]
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      11 months ago

      Legislation, paperwork, border checks and tariffs make it more expensive and difficult to transport stuff to the UK. Companies importing from the EU pass on the higher cost of transport to customers. Customers now pay more for the same thing because it costs more to import.

      EDIT: Should also mention that this applies to stuff made in the UK too. I doubt there’s many industries that don’t use anything from the EU for raw materials. If you make a widget with German steel, you still pay for that import even if your widget is made in the UK. That cost gets passed on to customers too.

  • theodewere
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    11 months ago

    the money went somewhere… it’s in somebody’s pockets, just look around and see who got rich… i’m betting it was the people who were already disgustingly wealthy before the big move…

    • @straypet
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      2211 months ago

      If you have a car worth 20k and you total it into a wall, those 20k don’t go into someone else’s pocket, that value is just gone.

      Brexit is the wall, the UK’s economy is the car.

    • @Buffalox
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      11 months ago

      You are thinking about economy as a Zero sum game, but that’s not how economy works. Even if there are people that make money when the economy is down, that doesn’t mean they make as much as others have lost. If they did, the economy wouldn’t be down, it would merely have shifted.
      The fact that economy is NOT a zero sum game, is kind of a corner stone in how EU works. We all benefit from being able to trade with each other on equal terms.

      The fact that UK is doing as poorly as they are, kind of proves the idea is right. You can be against EU for ideological reasons, but being against it for economic reasons, make little sense. And the Brexit campaign constantly hammered the idea, that despite all reason, UK would somehow benefit economically from Brexit. Anyone who believed the Brexit propaganda were conned.

      The ones that might gain from this, are the filthy rich, who are working on undermining UK welfare and general conditions for middle and lower class people, to exploit the population more for their own gains.

        • @Buffalox
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          611 months ago

          Yes, working class is being systematically undermined, I think that may have been part of why the likes of Boris Johnson wanted out. They are doing things now that wouldn’t be legal as an EU member. For instance limiting the democratic freedom to protest.

    • @radiosimian
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      1211 months ago

      Dude. The UK broke its trade deals and left. Now it pays increased taxes on all goods and services from the EU.

    • @Pretzilla
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      11 months ago

      Some were paid off, others kompromized. Brexit was a pootin endeavor.

      • theodewere
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        611 months ago

        he works for the world billionaire class, and they are the ones who profit by this kind of thing

  • @Rand0mA
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    311 months ago

    What they really mean is “Brexit gave tory cunts the opportunity to rob the uk economy of £140bn and stick it their own pockets” someone needs to punch sunak in that smug horse face of his. Cunt!!

  • FauxPseudo
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    -211 months ago

    140 in reference to what? What percentage of GDP is that? I don’t like large numbers that don’t have a reference point listed too. It might as well say £1.4e11 because it’s just as descriptive and meaningless without a sense of proportion. A percentage would have been a lot more useful.

    • @bluemellophone
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      311 months ago

      You don’t need a percentage to make that number meaningful. That amount of money would nearly fund the US Navy for 1 year. They operate multiple nuclear aircraft carriers and submarines.

      • FauxPseudo
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        211 months ago

        Does a number comparing it to a US thing contribute as much as giving a reference point to the UK thing? Comparing it to something outside of the UK doesn’t make it very relevant to UK people. Especially since most people have zero concept of the US naval budget as we tend to lump all military spending together in the US.

        I just looked it up and the entire military budget for the UK is $68 billion. “Brexit cost UK twice annual defense budget” offers a much better scope. It hits in a way that a number too large for people to grasp just can’t do."