If Britain was to leave the European Union and join the US, it would be poorer than all of the other states in America apart from Mississippi, new figures suggest.

The figures, produced by Fraser Nelson, the Editor of The Spectator, also said that without the South-east, Britain could be considered worse off than America's most-deprived state as well.

Nelson said that Britain would rank 50th out of 51 states based on the gross domestic product (GDP) per capita figures and cost of living.

For his research, Nelson took the US figures for GDP per state in America and divided it by the population to create a GDP per capita figure.

GDP per capita is the total output of a place divided by the number of people who live in it.

To do the same for Britain, he used the most up-to-date Treasury figures. He also compared the wealth of nations and used a measure called Purchasing Power Parity (PPP), to see how far money would go in each place as the price of living often varies.

“PPP adjusts for the domestic purchasing power of each nation’s currency”.

His research also included some other European countries, including Norway, Switzerland, Sweden and Germany.

Nelson found that if Britain, with a GDP per capita of $36, 356 for every person, were to leave the European Union and join the US, it would be poorer than most other states including Kansas, Alabama and Missouri.

He explains: "If Britain were to somehow leave the European Union and become the 51st state of America, we would actually be one of the poor states.

"If you take our economic output, adjust for living costs and slot it into the US league table then the United Kingdom emerges as the second-poorest state in the union.

"We’re poorer than much-maligned Kansas and Alabama and well below Missouri, the scene of all the unrest in recent weeks.

"We certainly have our problems; we’re just better at concealing them.”

Meanwhile, Alaska with a GDP per state of $59 billion dollars and a population of just over 731,000 comes top of the list at $80, 741.