UK (Parliament Politic Magazine) – Three and a half years have passed since the UK officially left the European Union. Some things have gone well, like good trade numbers, but there’s also a problem with a lot of illegal migration. It’s been a little over seven years since then. During this time, the UK had four different prime ministers, two times when everyone voted for new leaders, and a really bad sickness that spread everywhere.
The people who wanted the UK to leave the EU said they wanted control over their borders, money, and laws. They didn’t want people they didn’t elect in Brussels to make decisions for them. They wanted the UK to be in charge. They’ve made progress on some of these things, but other things are stuck or going backward.
How UK Makes and Uses Money
Economy means how a country makes and uses money. In the UK, the economy grew by 0.2 percent from the beginning to the middle of 2023. This is better than what experts thought would happen. On the other hand, the economy of the EU didn’t grow during this time.
There is good news recently about the economy, but there are also some not-so-good things happening. Every year, the total value of all the things a country makes and does, called GDP, was £2.11 trillion in 2016. In 2019, it became £2.24 trillion. But by 2022, it went down a bit to £2.23 trillion. Among the big countries, the UK is the only one in the G7 group whose economy is still not as strong as before the pandemic.
In July, a group called the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said the UK’s economy would grow by 0.4 percent in 2023. Before, they thought it might shrink by 0.3 percent.
Trade
Trading means buying and selling goods between countries. When a country makes its own trade deals, it can choose what it wants to trade with other countries. This was seen as a good thing when the UK left a group called the EU because now it can make its own deals instead of being part of a big group.
The UK has already made 70 agreements with other countries to trade independently. Some agreements were made quickly before leaving the EU, and the UK also made deals with Australia and New Zealand after that. Most of the agreements are like the ones the UK had before when it was in the EU.
Just recently, the UK agreed to join a trading group called the CPTPP, which includes 11 countries in the Asia-Pacific region. This group’s trade is worth a huge amount of money each year.
The UK is doing well with its trade. The value of the things it sells to other countries went up by almost 20 percent in a year, and the things it buys from other countries went up by around 12 percent. This means the total value of the UK’s yearly trade is now at a really high amount, almost £1.75 trillion.
Read More: The Regulatory Landscape of CBD in Europe
Borders
During the time of the referendum, a big topic was migration. This means people moving from one place to another. There were two main reasons for this: the war in Syria and fighting in Kosovo and Afghanistan. Around 1.3 million people entered the European Union (EU) to ask for safety in 2015.
Many of these people went to the United Kingdom (UK). In that year, the UK government got 32,733 requests from people who wanted to be refugees, which means they wanted to live safely in the UK. At the same time, the total number of people coming to the UK (immigrating) minus the number of people leaving (emigrating) was 330,000.
In 2022, there were 76,000 requests for safety in the UK. The total number of people moving to the UK was more than half a million for the first time, reaching a really high number of 606,000 – which is almost double the previous numbers.
Some of these people were running away from the war in Ukraine, but a big reason for the increase was also more people coming to the UK by crossing the English Channel in small boats. More than 100,000 people did this over the last five years.