Rising energy bills, higher prices and a critical shortage of workers leading to food and fuel supply constraints are threatening to stall Britain's recovery from the pandemic.
The crises afflicting the UK economy have sparked talk in newspapers and among politicians of a looming "winter of discontent," a reference to the wave of strike action in 1978-79 that brought the British economy to its knees. There's even talk of stagflation, the nightmare combination of stagnant growth and high inflation.
Although shortages, supply chain delays and rising food and energy costs are affecting several major economies, including the United States, China and Germany, Britain is suffering more than most because of Brexit.
Specifically, the form of Brexit pursued by the UK government — which introduced stringent immigration policies and took Britain out the EU market for goods and energy, making it much harder for British companies to hire European workers and much more costly for them to do business with the country's single biggest trading partner.
It didn't have to be this way — there were other options for a future EU-UK relationship. Worker shortages, for example, were not an inevitable outcome of Brexit, nor was going it alone on energy. But in Prime Minister Boris Johnson's ideological rush to "get Brexit done" amid fraught negotiations with the European Union, agreements in several crucial areas, including energy, were sidelined.
Read more at:
Brexit choices are making Britain's fuel and food shortages worse - CNN
No comments:
Post a Comment