Heather Stewart

So it was quite a long period where if you were an investor or someone thinking of sort of putting money into the UK economy, it felt like maybe now wasn't the moment because you weren't quite clear what relationship we were going to have with the EU.

If I'm a big multinational, will I be able to sell my products into the EU tariff free or not?

I don't know.

Well, maybe I'll just wait.

So there was quite a long period of uncertainty while we sort of rowed amongst ourselves.

And then with Brussels.

Yeah, I mean, do you know what?

I don't think the city has suffered as there were fears it might.

I think, you know, if you go down to Canary Wharf or whatever, there's not much sign of a downturn, although there's an argument that perhaps it would have done even better had we not had Brexit.

But the other impact is exports.

You know, lots of companies, small to large, will tell you it's just become more difficult.

You know, there are more checks.

There is tariff-free trade, but only if you can comply with particular rules.

There are complexities about VAT and so on.

So it just isn't as easy to export to the EU as it was.

It's not as frictionless as it once was.

And it's our biggest market because it's right on our doorstep.

And we've done some other trade deals, but there's no evidence so far in the data that those have, by any stretch of the imagination, started to offset the weakness in trade with the EU.

Migration is a really interesting one, right?

Because migration was one of the key issues on which the campaign was fought, right?