Almost seven years on from the Brexit referendum, there remains uncertainty over the future UK-EU relationship. Reflecting on the lessons from the last seven years, Neil Kinnock argues there remains a clear case for the UK being an economic, political, social, scientific and cultural part of the Europe of the future.

31 January marks the two-year anniversary of the UK’s official withdrawal from the EU. Investment Monitor examines how hard Brexit has hit the UK economy so far.

However, this article seeks to describe, as far as possible, how Brexit has affected the business and regulatory environment across the full range of areas covered by Steptoe and Johnson practices so far, and to identify issues of potential future concern for companies.

Brexit has reduced UK trade openness, foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows, and immigration growth. New border frictions and higher transport costs pose new barriers to trade, and FDI inflows are unlikely to return to levels reached in the 1990s and 2000s.

Now that many advanced economies have recovered and are close to – or above – their pre-pandemic level of output, we can compare Britain’s economic performance to its peers. The results are troubling.

While the picture’s hardly pretty and certainly not what advocates of Brexit envisioned, none of it surprises economists. As a former Bank of England official observed: “You run a trade war against yourself, bad things happen.”

Especially if you supported Leave. It's a brutal, lengthy, detailed dissection of all the potential economic damage leaving the EU will do to the UK.