President of the European Council Donald Tusk speaks during the final press conference at the end of the European Union leaders summit Picture: Getty)

The UK will be five times more vulnerable to economic disasters than the rest of the European Union following Brexit.

Negative economic impacts from disruptions to trade caused by Brexit, will pu Britain in ‘a very weak bargaining position’, a new study has found.

According to researchers from the University of Birmingham, the research showed an element of Turkeys voting for Christmas, as regions which voted Leave in last year’s referendum are among the most vulnerable to an economic hit.

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Researchers said their findings show it is ‘not correct’ to argue that Britain’s trade deficit with the rest of the EU gives it an advantage in negotiations, as some Brexiteers have been.




Analysis of trade relationships suggests a ‘very different’ hypothesis, which predicts the loss of access to the single market and customs union is ‘far more damaging’ to the UK than the EU27, who will suffer losses ‘found to be virtually insignificant’, according to an EU impact assessment published earlier this year.

‘The UK and its regions are far more vulnerable to trade-related risks of Brexit than other EU member states and their regions,’ said the report by the University’s ‘s City Region Economic and Development Institute (City-Redi), published in academic journal Papers in Regional Science.

The UK is going to be more economically sensitive than the EU following Brexit Picture: Getty)

‘As such, the UK is far more dependent on a relatively seamless and comprehensive free trade deal than the other EU member states.

‘Mercantilist arguments popular in the UK media, which posit that the UK trade deficit with the rest of Europe implies that on economic grounds other EU member states will be eager to agree a free trade deal with the UK, are not correct.

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‘The UK’s exposure to Brexit is some 4.6 times greater than that of the rest of other EU as a whole, and the UK regions are far more exposed to Brexit risks than regions in other EU countries, except for those in Ireland.

‘As such, in all likelihood the potential impacts of either no deal between the UK and the EU or a bad deal, whereby the UK’s access to the single market and the customs union is heavily curtailed, are far more damaging for the UK than for the rest of the EU.’

‘All UK regions are systematically more vulnerable to Brexit than regions in any other country’, with trade-related risk exposure ranging from almost 17% of GDP in parts of the North to 10% in London and northern Scotland.

The most vulnerable regions were Cumbria (16.8%), the East Riding of Yorkshire and north Lincolnshire (15.8%), Gloucestershire, Wiltshire & North Somerset (15.6%), Leicestershire & Northamptonshire (15.4%) and Lancashire (15%).

An EU flag and a Union flag held by a demonstrator is seen with Elizabeth Tower (Big Ben) and the Houses of Parliament Picture: Getty)

Overall, the results show that 2.64% of EU GDP is at risk because of Brexit trade-related consequences. In the UK, Brexit trade-related risks account for 12.2% of UK GDP, said the report.

As if the predictions weren’t bad enough, the researchers warned that their analysis ‘may not represent an upper bound, and that the actual Brexit-related exposure risks facing the UK and its regions are even greater’.



Ireland is the only one of the EU27 facing similar risks to the least-affected UK regions, with exposure in the order of 10% of GDP due to its long-standing trade integration with the UK.

Elsewhere in Europe, Germany has the highest exposure level at 5.5% of GDP, followed by the Netherlands (4.4%), Belgium (3.5%) and France (2.2%). Other EU nations – with the exception of tiny Malta (5.1%) – face ‘almost no exposure at all’, with southern European states like Italy, Spain and Greece barely affected.