After the vote for Brexit, it was often said that our departure from the EU was most likely to harm the very people who voted for it: the industrial workers of the Midlands and North. Didn’t they know that a vote for Brexit would, in itself, lead to 500,000 more job losses? Couldn’t they see that Nissan was bound to wind down its operations in Sunderland and move business to mainland Europe?
Almost four years on, it’s safe to say that most of the economic doom-mongering was nonsense. This week’s figures on jobs and earnings show that, since the referendum, employment is up by one million — and it is rising still. Unemployment in the UK is at its lowest since 1974. Unemployment in Wales is at its lowest since records began. Leaked internal reports from Nissan have revealed that, if the current round of Brexit talks fail, it could move production of Micras from France to Sunderland, aiming to capture a bigger share of the UK market.
This week’s figures also explain why Jeremy Corbyn failed to gain any traction with his idea of an exploited ‘zero hours Britain’ suffering at the bottom of a ‘widening gap between rich and poor’.
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