Europe' s recovery should be welcomed by Brexiteers and Remainers alike

Abstract

With the Bank of England MPC deciding in its August meeting that despite inflation likely to stay above target for a while monetary policy should remain ultra loose for the time being, that is good for prospects for the UK economy. On the assumption of easy monetary conditions continuing to exist the IMF in late July had already upped its UK GDP forecast by most of all advanced nations to 7.0% for 2021 after a nearly 10% drop in 2020. But where is Europe going? It matters because, even though we have had the odd month since the turn of the year when we imported more from China than from Germany, the EU as a whole is still the UK's major trading partner, and will remain that for years to come . And this despite a busy Department of Trade signing as many Free Trade Agreements as it can with other nations and regions – some rollovers of previous EU deals that had to be renegotiated once the UK left the region's and some new.