Brexit Turns Ten
Thursday, June 25th, 2026
Bill Bonner, from London, England
“Everything government touches turns to crap.”
—Ringo Starr
London is sweltering. Fortunately, our hotel is air-conditioned. Good restaurants, too, tend to cool their customers.
This week, we’ve looked at what appears to be a deep malaise in the UK. It seeps into every conversation like ‘rising damp’ in an old English wall. Another prime minister has gotten the boot. Sluggish GDP growth. Rising prices. Unemployment. Rampaging mobs.
But first, as of Tuesday, it looked like that tech sell-off we’ve been expecting was finally underway. NBC News:
Markets tumbled around the world Tuesday as renewed doubts about sky-high valuations appeared to take hold of investors in some of the largest AI, chip and memory stocks.
And poor Elon!
His wax wings seemed to get too close to the hot sun.
The Telegraph:
Elon Musk loses trillionaire status after Wall Street slump
Another feint by Mr. Market? A practice jump before the real plunge? We don’t know. Yesterday, the techs began what looked like a recovery...but by the end of the day the Nasdaq was down again.
Meanwhile...back in London....
May, Johnson, Truss, Sunak, Starmer...and presumably Burnham. Prime Ministers come and go — by the time we’ve learned how to pronounce their names...we’re on to the next one. This is not necessarily a bad thing. He who is not really worth getting to know is probably not worth getting to know well. But the coming and going in such rapid succession — like people leaving a bar before they’ve finished their first drink — suggests dissatisfaction.
Teresa May took over in 2016. Her main mission was to oversee Britain’s withdrawal from Brexit. Nick Clegg, writing in yesterday’s Financial Times, tells us how the UK economy was doing on the eve of her rule:
‘From late 2012 to the Brexit vote in 2016 the UK economy regularly grew faster than the G7 average; indeed, in 2014, the last full year of the (David Cameron) coalition, the UK’s annual growth rate (just shy of 3%) outstripped the US — almost unimaginable now. At the same time, and contrary to many predictions, employment rose, with 2 million net jobs created…It was the last time the UK enjoyed a sustained period of economic growth and political stability.’
What went wrong? The culprit most people pick out of the police line-up is Brexit. It’s easy to see how leaving a large free trade zone might reduce sales, profits, and growth.
Whether the fault lies in the divorce itself...or in the way the French tried to punish the Brits for Brexiting, we don’t know. Perhaps the UK could have preserved the free-trade baby while tossing out the EU’s red tape and regulation bathwater. Or maybe not.
But it’s now been ten years after the break-up, and the French are gloating. The cover story on this week’s L’Express.
The Fiasco of Brexit: Why the Brits will come back
Marks & Spencer’s used to sell its fresh sandwiches in Europe. The distribution system was smooth and fast. It had to be. “If our trucks have to wait a half a day [at the border crossing] it will be the end of our sandwiches in Paris,” said the chief of M&S in the lead up to Brexit.
M&S is no longer delivering its fresh sandwiches to Paris. But it’s still selling them in Ireland, which is complicated. Northern Ireland is part of the UK, but the Republic is part of Europe. An M&S spokesman:
“Our trucks to Ireland were stopped for 16 hours before going on their way, with 200 documents [needed for customs]...requiring precise information such as the Latin name for the chicken used in our ‘Chicken Tikka Masala.’”
He went on to lament that it cost M&S more than a million pounds per year just to get its meat products certified fit for export. Overall, British food exports to Europe have declined by about a third since Brexit happened.
Brexit was followed by movement in both directions. While the M&S sandwiches left Paris, the famous ‘Polish plumbers’ left London. One of the reasons the Brits voted for Brexit was to rid themselves of the inconsiderate tradesmen, coming from Eastern Europe, who would unclog their toilets for much less money than their native pipe fitters (thus taking jobs from the locals).
Now the shoe is on the other foot...and it’s walking briskly out the door. The latest figures show that 6,000 Poles settled in the UK last year. But 25,000 Poles went home. The Polish economy is now one of the fastest-growing in Europe, with 3.5% growth last year — compared to only 1.1% for the UK.
But at least for now… in our Covent Garden hotel...the plumbing still works. The restaurants and bars are full. And people bustle about just as they always did.
Regards,
Bill Bonner
