The UK’s largest retailers have warned Rishi Sunak that his government risks prolonging the cost of living crisis by driving up the cost of doing business on the high street with Brexit red tape and higher taxes.
The British Retail Consortium (BRC) said a number of measures laid out by the chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, in last week’s autumn statement risked adding to inflation next year.
After soaring to a 41-year high last autumn, inflation has fallen back before this year’s pivotal Christmas shopping season. The BRC said its measure of annual shop price inflation eased for the sixth month in a row to 4.3% in November, down from 5.2% in October. The decline does not mean shop prices are going down, only that they are rising less rapidly.
However, the industry trade body warned that retailers were facing headwinds in 2024 from “government-imposed” measures – including tax increases and Brexit red tape – which risked fuelling inflation.
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The cost of managing post-Brexit import checks and labelling rules, due to come into force next year, are also likely to be passed on to shoppers, it said. » | Richard Partington, Economics correspondent | Tuesday, November 28, 2023
Sunak is superrich; unfortunately, however, he is not supersmart! In today's interconnect world, no one who is supersmart would embrace the silly notion of Brexit! To do so is tantamount to displaying geopolitical ignorance. The pursuit of Brexit, therefore, was, is, and will forever remain a fool's mission! Anyone who thinks that this small, post-imperial nation with a rapidly ageing population can become the economic powerhouse of the world with super high levels of economic growth is deluded, economically illiterate and, quite frankly, foolish. To talk, as Jeremy Hunt did, of turbo-charging economic growth shows us that the Chancellor is given both to bouts of fantasy and to bouts of hallucination, both possibly in equal measure!
There is only one route to economic success for this über-proud nation and that is inside the European Union. No imaginative, magical thinking is going to change this fact; for indeed, a fact it truly is. Indeed, it is not only a fact, but a harsh reality.
Belonging to the European Union is like belonging to the European family of nations, to which we indubitably belong whether we are inside of it or outside of it. The advantages of belonging to the European family from the inside are incalculable, both in economic and political terms. I therefore say to all, my fellow countrymen, and to my brothers and sisters in Europe, here and now: Brexit must be reversed as quickly as possible. Both for the good of this nation and for the good of Europe itself. This nation is stonger in Europe and Europe is stronger when we are in it. Europe needs to be whole, it needs to be free, and it needs to be strong. The stronger and the more united Europe can be, the better. Only when working together, each nation being as helpful and co-operative with the other as is possible — or as the Arabs would say, working as one hand — can Europe ever hope to be geopolitically strong and powerful.
I repeat: Brexit must be reversed as quickly as possible. No ifs, no buts. Der Brexit muß schnellstens rückgängig gemacht werden. Le Brexit doit être annulé le plus rapidement possible. – © Mark Alexander
