The election is an opportunity to vote out MPs who sacrificed the economy for Brexit - Will Kemp

Since leaving the EU in 2020 with the blind optimism of England starting a FIFA World Cup campaign, the reality of Brexit is now plain to see. It has led to a 4 per cent loss in the UK’s Gross Domestic Product (the total value of goods and services produced in a given period) according to the Office for Budget Responsibility.

The Financial Times estimates this equates to £100bn a year in lost output and £40bn less revenue to the Treasury, thus reducing public spending and conditions for growth. The UK can ill-afford such losses, given its seismic national debt (£2.5 trillion and rising), which already limits policy options, as Liz Truss found out to everyone’s cost in 2022.

Brexit has also bankrupted many UK firms. Led others to relocate in mainland Europe to remain in the Single Market. Increased red tape. Caused the abolition of a national infrastructure project, HS2b, just to balance the books. Wasted Parliamentary time in debating a settlement with the EU. Made us no more free than in 2016. Fuelled net migration, which reached a record high in 2022, with migrant workers now coming from further afield – for a longer period of time, with more dependents – than their more flexible EU predecessors.

But perhaps the biggest evil of Brexit is that it consigns the UK to ‘structural’ inflation in the long term since the exodus of mobile EU workers means it can no longer adjust readily to price increases, especially in the south-east, hence the Organisation for Economic Co-operation & Development’s recent forecast that it will suffer minimal growth and the highest inflation of the G7 countries through to 2026. These outcomes were foreseeable. For example, in May 2016 an Ipsos survey of Royal Economics Society members established that 88 per cent thought Brexit would harm GDP with only 4 per cent believing otherwise. Yet most MPs simply followed the herd and did nothing. Why?

Because, firstly, we have too many MPs, meaning that quality and consensus are harder to achieve, and most can lie low when things get rough. And secondly, and more importantly, too few have been schooled in Economics, since a large number came to power by way of minority issues, meaning that the UK will continue to veer from one crisis to another unless we reverse this shortfall.

As such, the election offers a major opportunity to stop the rot and usher in a better calibre of politician – with integrity, experience and a grounding in economics. So let us exercise some scrutiny and vote out of office those MPs – from whatever party – who supported the pie-in-the-sky promises of Brexit and thereby sacrificed the nation’s long term economic interests for their own short term political ends.

Will Kemp studied Economics at Cambridge University.