Latest updates: prime minister says ‘freedoms unlocked by Brexit’ will help growth as IMF says UK economy will shrink
In its statement about the Brexit anniversary released overnight, Downing Street says Brexit is “a huge opportunity to deliver on the prime minister’s priorities to the British public”. And it identifies five areas where it claims Brexit is contributing to the growth agenda. It says:
Freeports: From Plymouth to Teesside, eight freeports across England are now open for business, galvanising emerging sectors from manufacturing to renewable energy and delivering jobs and prosperity in areas that need it the most. Crucial to the ambitious levelling up agenda, two new green freeports will be established in Scotland – expected to bring £10.8 billion of public and private investment and creating over 75,000 high-skilled jobs – while we will announce plans for at least one freeport in Wales in the coming months.
Edinburgh Reforms: In addition to the financial services and markets bill and reforming Solvency II, the government is taking advantage of the UK’s position outside the EU and going further through the Edinburgh Reforms to ensure the UK’s financial services sector is dynamic, sustainable and globally competitive – supporting businesses and powering growth right across the country.
It’s been a complete disaster. The reality is it’s been a lose-lose situation for us and Europe. Europe has lost more [in financial services] but we’ve lost as well. And the reality of Brexit was, it was just was a bunch of complete and total lies.
The only way that the Brexit put forward by Boris Johnson was going to work was if there was a complete deregulation of the UK and we moved to a sort of Liz Truss utopia of a Singapore state and that was just never going to happen.
