The State of Britain

John Springford of the CER warns that the picture looks even gloomier when you measure UK performance against countries most like us — so excluding the US and Germany — and including Australia, Canada and the Netherlands.  “Trade intensity in countries whose trends most closely matched the UK’s before 2019 is about 10 per cent higher than before the pandemic. For an open economy dependent on trade for cheaper products, innovation and productivity growth, this is awful performance,” he says.