More than twice the voters now believe that Brexit is taking a negative toll on the UK economy, as per the latest opinion poll for the Observer. The survey comes as Richard Hughes, the chairman of the Office for Budget Responsibility, said his organization calculated that the negative impact on GDP caused by the UK’s exit from the EU was expected to be twice as great as that resulting from the pandemic.
Hughes said Brexit would reduce the UK’s potential GDP by about 4 per cent in the long term, while the pandemic would cut it “by a further 2 per cent”. He added, “In the long term, it is the case that Brexit has a bigger impact than the pandemic.” The findings appear to be in line with other recent polling, which showed concern about the effects of Brexit rising to the point that it is not seen as the biggest issue for the country alongside Covid-19.
The opinion survey found that 44 per cent of people think Brexit is having a bad impact on the UK economy, compared with 25 per cent who think it is having a positive effect. In fact, 53 per cent people believe Brexit is having a bad effect on prices in shops, against 13 per cent who think it is having a good effect, while 51 per cent think it is adversely affecting the UK’s ability to import goods from the EU, against 15 per cent who think it is helping.
