DID you know that we recently overtook France to become the eighth-largest manufacturing nation in the world?
Or that our economy has recovered more strongly from Covid than Germany or France?
GOV.UKBusiness Secretary Kemi Badenoch says Brexit is working[/caption]
GettyThe anti-Brexit economic predictions simply haven’t come to pass[/caption]
And that “greenfield” direct foreign investment into the UK right now is greater than into those two countries combined?
Or that the Prime Minister and I just secured £30billion of foreign investment into the UK?
You’d be forgiven if you hadn’t heard these facts.
It seems few people, and certainly not many in the media outside of The Sun, have wanted to speak about the strengths of the UK economy.
This is partly understandable.
Between the pandemic and the spike in energy prices caused by Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine, times have been tough recently.
But there is another, more interesting reason.
Many of the people and institutions with the loudest voices in our public debate noisily prophesied that Brexit would be an economic disaster.
So perhaps it is only natural that they have not been keen to highlight the awkward news that it has been anything but.
A few years ago, former Labour Party spin doctor Alastair Campbell confidently declared: “If we leave, Nissan leaves.”
Two weeks ago, the very same Nissan doubled down on their UK operation, with a £2billion investment to mass-produce two new electric car models in Sunderland.
Tens of thousands of great jobs secured for many years to come — and, alas, a rare piece of news Alastair has yet to pass comment on.
And it’s not just Nissan.
Earlier this year, Tata — the owner of Jaguar Land Rover – announced one of the largest-ever investments in the UK car industry with its plans to build a new gigafactory in Somerset.
BMW likewise recently committed £600million to a complete modernisation of its Mini factory in Oxfordshire.
The anti-Brexit economic predictions simply haven’t come to pass.
Nissan doubled down
We were told leaving the EU would trigger a recession and curb our growth.
There was no recession and our economy has grown faster than Germany, France and many EU countries since we left in January 2020.
We were told London would lose its status as the financial capital of Europe.
Its competitive advantage has, if anything, grown.
We were told we couldn’t get a good deal with the EU.
We’ve taken back control of our laws and secured tariff-free access to the EU’s single market.
We were told other countries wouldn’t want any trade deals with Brexit Britain.
Yet we’ve signed 73 free trade deals since leaving.
And earlier this year, I secured our entry into the CPTPP: a free trade area of 11 other sovereign countries across Asia and the Pacific — regions that will account for most of the world’s economic growth in the decades to come.
And the main economic argument for Brexit looks even stronger now than it did in 2016.
That argument was and remains that in a fast-changing world we are better off in control of our own future, rather than mindlessly following the EU and being tied to its fate.
Without Brexit we would never have approved and rolled out the Covid vaccine as fast as we did — and been the first country in Europe to emerge from the pandemic.
Vote of confidence
Brexit has not stopped Microsoft, Google and many more tech companies investing the billions they are in UK right now.
We have an advantage over the EU’s clunky approach to regulating AI and technology and we are using it.
Across the board, we are using our new-found freedoms to reform our regulations to spur growth and innovation.
We are making it easier to deliver drugs and new treatments to safely help patients.
To unlock billions of pension savings to be invested in our own economy and people.
To cut the nuisance red tape that is currently hampering small businesses and start-ups.
Brexit was a vote of confidence by the British people in our country.
A conviction that we would be better off as masters of our own fate.
That conviction has paid dividends and it will keep doing so because I am determined to work day in and day out to reap the benefits of Brexit.
The greatest threat to Brexit Britain’s prosperity booming in the second half of the 2020s is Sir Keir Starmer.
A man who, for reasons unknown, clearly yearns for us to blindly copy and paste whatever Brussels does, and whose Shadow Foreign Secretary cannot even rule out rejoining the EU.
But I for one am confident the British people will act as wisely in 2024 as they did in 2016.
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