Rishi Sunak has already been called out by people online for overlooking the impact Brexit has had on the public purse.
Speaking on the first full day of his election campaign, the prime minister told voters in Derbyshire that Labour policies would cost taxpayers £2,000 each.
He said: “The only certainty you get with the Labour Party is that they will run out of money and they will put your taxes up as clear as night follows day.
“We just ran the numbers the other week.
“All the things they want to do, all the things they want to spend money on – you tot all that up, it’s going to cost you £2,000, every working family in our country.”
However, as people pointed out on X, a report from January shows the average Brit is already nearly £2,000 worse off due to Brexit.
The 2023 findings from Cambridge Econometrics, commissioned by City Hall, revealed that there were two million job losses nationwide in the financial services and construction sectors as a result of leaving the bloc.
In fact, Brexit’s total cost to the UK economy is £140 billion, the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, claimed at the time.
Left: Rishi Sunak says that Labour will cost everyone in the country £2,000
— Farrukh (@implausibleblog) May 23, 2024
Right: Brexit which Rishi Sunak voted for and believes in, is costing every person in the country £2,000 pic.twitter.com/sArEeRzkfC
This is not the only report to conclude that Brexit made life worse in the UK; the UK in a Changing Europe think tank and the LSE have previously estimated that Brexit already added 6% to food bills.
Sunak campaigned and voted for Brexit in the run-up to the EU referendum.
And, speaking to the Tory conference last October, he said the economy had grown faster than France and Germany not “despite Brexit but because of Brexit”.
It does not seem like many people agree with that assessment, though.
A UK In A Changing Europe report from last autumn concluded that only 18% of those who voted Leave in 2016 think Brexit is going well; 22% decided it was going badly or very badly, and a quarter think the UK economy has weakened since the referendum.
While Sunak may be pleased the economy has improved – inflation has fallen to 2.3% – there are plenty of stats suggesting Brits are still worse off due to the cost of living crisis.
Labour claimed in April that Conservative rising taxes will cost the average household £870 per year; mortgage payments £240 more a month and everyday items £150 more per week – adding up to far more than the £2,000 Sunak alleged.
