No-deal Brexit would strike economy more difficult than Covid, OBR alerts

A no-deal Brexit would strike a disastrous blow to parts of the UK economy spared the worst of the coronavirus crisis and result in hundreds of thousands of job losses, the Office for Budget Plan Duty (OBR) has actually forecasted.

The economy is already anticipated to agreement by a total of 11.3%this year – the “biggest fall in 300 years”, says Politico‘s Ian Dunt. A failure to reach a post-Brexit trade contract with the EU might decrease GDP by a further 2%next year on top of the financial damage wrought by the pandemic, according to a freshly published OBR report

And that drop is available in addition to a 4?ll in GDP that the spending watchdog anticipates will result from Britain stopping the EU even if an offer is protected.

If desperate Brexit settlements stop working to flourish, the tariffs and barriers that will follow are expected to “disproportionately impact sectors that otherwise would have come through the pandemic reasonably untouched”, says The Times

Four sectors that were “spared a huge Covid-19 hit” – agriculture, financing, property and mining – are expected to be “injured most”, adds the Financial Times

The OBR forecasts that the combined impacts of no-deal will lead to more than 300,000 job losses by November next year, in addition to the almost million more individuals who are anticipated to be made jobless as a result of the Covid crisis.

The watchdog says that would take joblessness levels to 8%, “rather than the 7.5%it currently forecast”, reports The Independent

Hopes of improving the UK economy by protecting free trade offers with non-EU countries seem ill-founded too.

The OBR forecasts that such arrangements would provide only “modest” growth, with a trade deal with the US forecast to include just 0.02%to 0.15%to GDP.

The publication of the OBR report comes as Brexit talks stay deadlocked. EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen alerted the other day that issues ” that can make the difference between deal or no deal” had yet to be fixed as the clock ticks down until the end of the transition duration.