Leavers were fond of telling us that we are the fifth largest economy in the world. Indeed, but did they look at the size of the first three? And of course now we might be only sixth.
The first two are giants, and would drive two very one-sided hard bargains with us. But, hey, they say, leaving the EU will give us a chance to do more business with the so-called BRIC countries – Brazil, Russia, India and China. Well, the last one is China again – one of those tough talking giants we just mentioned. But the others are actually not really as large as you might think – Russia is indirectly at war with us, and they all have economic problems of their own.
The Leavers also have great hopes for Australia, Canada and New Zealand as well. But there again, Australia and Canada are not especially large and I’m afraid new Zealand is pretty much a minnow.
So how was leaving the EU – the largest trading block on the planet – supposed to work to our advantage? No-one really knew – they certainly didn’t!
Don’t you think that we Brits sometimes get a bit above ourselves and overestimate our global importance? The chart (which is from 2013) does seem to suggest that.
