> that would imply that fixing it would be easier than it actually is

I assume the self-inflicted part is leaving the common market / customs union... and rejoining this is not easy at all. I think it might be politically impossible for at least 10 years.

I'd agree after watching this YT video by the Financial Times. Suddenly having to pay import taxes led many companies to move operations to mainland Europe.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wO2lWmgEK1Y

I wonder if EU would let UK join without adopting the Euro. The UK seems to have lost a lot of its negotiating power that let them keep the GBP the first time.

> I wonder if EU would let UK join without adopting the Euro. The UK seems to have lost a lot of its negotiating power that let them keep the GBP the first time.

If the UK rejoined (assuming it was welcome after the last few years) I find myself wondering if forcing us (I'm British) to go all the way - into the Euro and onwards to full participation in everything - might actually be a good idea.

There are some aspects which taken in isolation may not be that great an idea (eg a Euro which includes such a variety of economies), but contrast that with the last approx half century where we've been the wall-fly. The one who goes to the dance, but hangs around the edges and never really joins in.

Half-hearted commitment can often be worse than none at all, and being forced to commit fully in order to be able to rejoin may well be the making of a better UK that takes it seriously and helps drive things forward.

Possibly.

What the UK had before was pretty much "EU membership the good parts" - and (a slim majority of) the public rejected that. Is full membership really possible?

That was a slim majority of who voted at the time. Leave voters heavily skewed older. Even just taking out the people who have died since the vote would result in a remain vote. 15 years worth of younger voters would overwhelmingly vote for remain.

Unless they change their minds in the meantime.

Half the countries in the EU don't use the Euro. Many economists recommend against a currency union without possibility of fiscal transfers to deal with asymmetric shocks, predicting what happened in the years after 2008.

I think OP means all of the idiotic decisions, from Brexit to all of the delusional politics that have achieved no actual economical advantages to the UK ever since.

Yes, I think those have contributed, but I think they play a minor role compared with some fundamental problems with both the global economy (Ukraine, most obviously) and the UK economy (low productivity).

The whole world is going through a down turn, however, the UK will likely impacted harder and longer. We gave up a trade deal with a very large trading block, the EU, and haven't been able to make up for this by having trade deals with the USA, China or India so far. The few wins, trade deals with New Zealand and Australia, are mostly symbolic as the impact on the GDP is expected to be small.

A trade deal with China looks unlikely given the current political climate. Trade deals with both the USA and India are fraught with political risk. The USA wants to be able to export GM food to the UK, out pricing UK farmers that were reliant on EU subsidies until recently. India is after a deal on immigration and this is even more contentious.

Trade deals will eventually be signed, however, almost certainly won't help to shorten or lessen the impact of the current recession.

You are correct. But it's not unfair to expect that one of the richest and most developed countries in the world would find ways around those issues.

> the UK economy (low productivity)

(Not directing this at you, as I have no knowledge of what you consider low productivity to mean.)

What is often missed in the talk of low productivity is that the general assumption on hearing the phrase is that the problem is a lazy and unproductive workforce, which leads to the workers being an obvious target of blame.

In economics terms MFP is the more important view of productivity, and it's the amount of output that can be generated for a given set of inputs including not just labour but also capital/investment. And in general terms the largest issue here is not lazy workers but extractive management and asset-owners who take out the profits (as dividends, salaries, share buy-backs, etc) rather than reinvest them in the companies and the infrastructure. Without that investment the organisation remains below par for productivity as the inputs remain stagnant.

And that understanding shifts both the blame (and the required direction of travel to tackle the issue) to where it should be focused. Not pay, workers rights, etc, but addressing the inequality that allows that extraction which is the real cause of the productivity gap.

Apparently the evangelical jehadis and MAGAts are likely gonna succeed towards a similar outcome here in the US. These people forget how much better western economies were before BREXIT and MAGA nuisance took over.

The way I look at it, there are many issues facing many economies at the moment. What Brexit did was remove any contingency that might have been available to ride out the storm.