The UK has slipped below France this year in the World Economic League Table (Welt), which tracks the size of economies around the world and forecasts how this might change in the next 15 years.

This fall was due to the large fall in the sterling exchange rate following the vote to leave the European Union, but Welt has predicted that it will catch up with France by 2021.

Douglas McWilliams, president of the Cebr, which carried out the research, said the table tracked "the pace of globalisation as the former leading economies from the West get overtaken by fast growing emerging economies."