{"id":210547,"date":"2025-10-13T16:00:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-13T16:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/210547\/"},"modified":"2025-10-13T16:00:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-13T16:00:09","slug":"im-glad-we-can-now-talk-about-brexit-damage-says-wes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/210547\/","title":{"rendered":"I\u2019m glad we can now talk about Brexit damage, says Wes\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wes Streeting <\/a>has said he is delighted that the government can now speak about the problems caused by Brexit<\/a>, as the prime minister gears up to blame the UK\u2019s exit from the European Union<\/a> for Britain\u2019s ailing economy. <\/p>\n

Speaking on a panel at the Cliveden Literary Festival, the health secretary <\/a>said the country is facing an \u201cenormous amount of jeopardy\u201d. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve had over a decade of low productivity, low growth, and therefore you end up a with high burden of taxation and people paying more through their taxes, and feeling they are getting less, because they are,\u201d Mr Streeting said. <\/p>\n

Asked how much he thinks Brexit is to blame for these problems, he said: \u201cIt\u2019s part of it. There\u2019s no doubt that that\u2019s the other problem we\u2019re dealing with. I\u2019m glad that Brexit is a problem whose name we now dare speak.\u201d<\/p>\n

It comes after sources told The Times that the prime minister will blame Nigel Farage <\/a>and Brexit for Britain\u2019s expected downturn in productivity at the November Budget, as part of a new attack on the Reform UK leader.<\/p>\n

Treasury officials are bracing for the Office for Budget Responsibility<\/a> (OBR) to lower its forecasts for productivity growth \u2013<\/a> a downgrade that is likely to create an extra shortfall of around \u00a320bn. <\/a>The shortfall is expected to be filled by a swathe of tax rises.<\/p>\n

Sir Keir<\/a> and chancellor Rachel Reeves<\/a> are reportedly planning to argue that this downgrade would not have happened were it not for Brexit<\/a>, pinning the blame on the Reform leader for leading the campaign to take Britain out of the EU.<\/p>\n

Health secretary Wes Streeting says there has not been a big enough debate about the economic problems caused by Brexit (PA)<\/p>\n

While the health secretary said he has \u201cenormous respect\u201d for people who voted to leave the EU, he said there had not been a big enough debate about the economic problems it has caused. <\/p>\n

\u201cThis has been my frustration about it … We were warned it was going to have an economic impact, and it has. And it\u2019s hit our country hard, so we\u2019re having to deal with Brexit,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re having to deal with the structural problems in the British economy, and we are doing that by creating stability and the conditions in which people can invest confidently in our country \u2013 recognising that governments don\u2019t create growth, but we can help to create the conditions for businesses to grow and thrive, and that\u2019s what we\u2019ve got to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

It comes afterThe Independent revealed in March that Brexit had cost UK business \u00a337bn a year<\/a> as the result of a 5 per cent drop in trade with the EU.<\/p>\n

In recent weeks Labour has ramped up its attacks on Nigel Farage for his role in taking Britain out of the EU (PA)<\/p>\n

While the government has gone some way to remedy the drag on trade, signing a fresh cooperation agreement with the bloc earlier this year, there are fears that the measures put in place still don\u2019t go far enough to offset the barriers caused by the UK\u2019s exit from the EU.<\/p>\n

The government has previously been reluctant to criticise Brexit, for fear that critics would seize on such criticism as evidence that Labour wants to take Britain back into the EU. <\/p>\n

But in recent weeks, the prime minister has been ramping up his attacks on Reform UK, and the role Mr Farage played in taking Britain out of the bloc, as part of an attempt to claw back Labour\u2019s struggling approval ratings. <\/p>\n

Sir Keir used the Labour conference in Liverpool to claim that his party is in \u201ca fight for the soul of the country\u201d against Reform UK, hitting back against the \u201clies and division\u201d of the right-wing party\u2019s populism.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wes Streeting has said he is delighted that the government can now speak about the problems caused by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":210548,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[64,63,1348,99,3355,164,3359,3353,44,3356,3354,3357,3358,1346],"class_list":["post-210547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-breaking-news","tag-business","tag-daily-news","tag-economy","tag-global-news","tag-inkl","tag-news","tag-news-app","tag-news-headlines","tag-news-today","tag-today-news","tag-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=210547"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210547\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/210548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=210547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=210547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=210547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}