Politics

Tory MPs toast new pork deal with South Korea worth £1 million… over five years

Tory MPs have been popping the Champagne corks after a new pork deal was struck with South Korea.

According to a government press release, British pigs in blankets could end up in South Korean Christmas dinners after rules banning the export of certain pork products to the country were removed.

Ignoring the fact that fewer than 30 per cent of people in South Korea identify as Christian, it didn’t take long for people to point out that the deal is pretty meager in comparison to what we’ve given up.

It is estimated the export of bacon and sausages could be worth “up to £1 million over the next five years”.

But as Peter Stefanovic pointed out, we’ve recently heard Brexit is costing the government £40 billion a year in lost tax revenue.

New research has found Brexit has cost the UK government £40 billion a year in lost tax revenue.

John Springford from the Centre for European Reform (CER) has been modelling the economic performance of a UK that remained in the EU since 2018, using data from countries like the US, Germany, New Zealand, Norway and Australia, whose performance was similar to the UK’s before Brexit.

According to his findings, the difference in performance between his “doppelgänger UK economy” and the real thing is stark.

Springford’s latest update estimates that Brexit reduced Britain’s GDP by 5.5 per cent by the second quarter of 2022.

Put another way, between April and June economic output was £33 billion lower than it would have been had the UK voted to stay in the EU, costing the government around £12 billion in lost tax revenues.

In the year to the end of June 2022, Springford estimates the tax loss at around £40 billion.

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Jack Peat

Jack is a business and economics journalist and the founder of The London Economic (TLE). He has contributed articles to VICE, Huffington Post and Independent and is a published author. Jack read History at the University of Wales, Bangor and has a Masters in Journalism from the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

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