The United Kingdom is now projected to have a significantly larger economy than France over the coming years, by the same think tank which previously forecast that leaving the European Union would see Brexit Britain “leapfrogged” by its competitor across the English Channel.
The Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) now acknowledged that “despite Brexit, the French economy failed to overtake the UK” — “despite Brexit” being the go-to phrase for almost all Remain-leaning commentators and organisations when forced to confront the reality of Britain not having fallen into ruin as a result of the vote Leave the EU, as most of them predicted/threatened during the 2016 referendum.
“We now expect that by 2034 the UK economy will be a quarter larger than the French economy,” the think tank added — possibly grudgingly, given they predicted in 2018 that Brexit-related “disruption” would see the French overtake the British.
The CEBR World Economic League Table (WELT) also contained some good news for Donald Trump’s America, which has “reached 24.8 per cent of world GDP, its largest share of the world economy since 2007” — the year before Trump’s Democrat predecessor Barack Obama was elected.
The CEBR further noted that the United States “is now expected to remain the world’s largest economy throughout the 2020s” and will not be overtaken by the People’s Republic of China, with its far larger population, until 2033, years later than the think tank had previously forecast.
The good news for Britain and America could ultimately prove synergistic, too, if the “very big, very powerful” trade deal which President Trump wants to strike with America’s mother country after Brexit comes to pass.
While the United States is already Britain’s single-largest trade and investment partner, British-American trade has been somewhat retarded by the absence of a bilateral trade agreement with the two countries — Britain being barred from striking such deals as long as it in the European Union, which controls its member-states’ international trade policy.
Other longstanding allies of the United Kingdom such as Australia and New Zealand have also expressed an interest in striking trade deals with Brexit Britain as soon as possible.