Will Brexit have negative or positive impact on the UK?

The British exit from the European Union, professed as ‘Brexit’, will have intensive

consequences. British voted in favour of Brexit with 52% to 48% referendum results on

March 29, 2016. Right after the referendum, The UK stock market went down drastically. The

sterling pound was lowest in the history against dollar and euro. The UK’s decision to leaving

the EU not only had shaken their economy but also left aftershocks on other EU member

countries.

In this argumentative essay, we will argue with the British point of view if the decision of

leaving the EU is beneficial for their country or not.

Economic Disaster for Scientific Research and Universities

Worldometers website shows that the population of UK is around to 0.88% of the whole

world. However, there are 4% of science researchers from UK and 16% of research papers

are considered as the most time being cited from other people. But there is a fact that ‘The

economist’ statistics suggest that more than 10% of the British universities’ funding were

from the EU from 2006 to 2015. The Brexit of UK will become a bug problem for all native

scientists and researchers.

Royal society released a series of a report which named “the British scientific research and

the European Union” in 2016. It showed from 2007 to 2013, UK offered funding about 5.4

billion euro to support science, but UK got 8.8 billion euro as research funding from the
European Union who was second level of total funding just after Germany. It is hard to

suppose that UK can be accepted in Brexit situation.

At present, 16% of researchers who worked in UK are from other EU countries, and more

than 50% researchers published papers in 2015 was multinational co-authored papers. Thus,

in this opinion, Brexit may cause damage in the liquidity of researchers between UK and

international community, and this will obviously be harmful to the development of British

scientific.

Counter Argument: (Shahid Naseem)

According to BBC (2016), UK only get 3% of the total budget of the EU Research and

Development. The UK can increase this funding for science and education by saving the EU

membership funding. Statistics from the European Parliament website shows that in 2015,

the UK received €7.46 billion in EU funding in total. On the other hand, in the same year the

UK contributed €18.21 billion to the EU budget (European Parliament , 2015). According to

these financial statistics, the UK will actually have more money to spend for the education,

science, research and development purposes.

Brexit does not mean that the only British can live and work in the UK. In March 2017, Prime

Minister of the UK, Theresa May issued a statement:

“I want to completely reassure people that under these plans no EU citizen currently in the

UK lawfully will be asked to leave at the point the UK leaves the EU. We want you to stay

(Mullin & Harper, 2017).”

According to the proposed plan, the nationals from other EU countries, who have spent less

than 5 years in the UK, can get UK resident permit (Travis, 2017). Hence, Brexit will not

impact the situation of the researchers already living in the UK.

Based on a report of The Royal Soceity(2016), there are 49% of UK nationals, 36% from non

EU countries and 14% researchers are from EU member countries. These statitics show that

the doors for the researchers will remain same because they get the scholarships and

fundings based on their work, not just only based on their nationality. There are also chnaces

that there will be more more funding for education after Brexit, so this mens there are going

to be opportunites for more researchers to work in the UK.

2. Lose a big EU market to trade

A big part of British economy dependents on external trade, which is around 40%. EU as a

large market has 27 member countries that approximately equal 5 billion populations. The

total volume of import and export Britain and the EU countries is slowly fluctuated, but the

proportion of total foreign trade between UK and EU were more than 50% from 2004 to

2012.

In 2012, the amount of exports was 1511.5 billion pounds and the amount of imports was

2058.2 billion pounds. It means the sum of trade between UK and EU reached up to 3569.7

billion pounds. Research shows that the top 10 countries who have economic trade with UK,

all of them are EU member except United Sates and China.

Besides foreign trade, there are also many various investments between UK and EU. The

total amount of investment from EU to UK was calculated around 496 billion pounds and the
total amount of investment from UK to EU reached up 404 billion pounds. Finance is

substantial to prove that UK should not exit EU, otherwise financial situation will bring bigger

shocks because of economy interdependence.

After exiting EU, UK would lose economic benefits such as tariff wall. The liquidity of

interchange goods and services would be slower. For instance, British dairy exports will face

tariff barriers from the European Union countries as much as 55% - 200%. According

calculation, if the tariff preference of clothing return to before, the price of all European

clothing markets would improve 12%. This moment, both sides of people’s daily life would

be given a wrong effect.

More funds to spend on Nationals in Terms of Health and Social Services.

According to the Thomas Kenny (2017), The EU progress to manage the economic issue that

had been evolving since 2008 is very slow and crisis have not been solved even after these

years. Economic growth of many EU member countries like Greece, Portugal and Ireland is

falling and they failed to pay back the guarantee as it was supposed to be. Unemployment

rate is also increasing in southern Europe. That results in increase of immigration to the

countries with better financial situations. United Kingdom is one of the favourite destination

for southern EU nationals where they have more chances of getting a job otherwise they can
enjoy better social benefits. This was also one of the major reasons why British voted in

favour of Brexit.

According to Office for National Statitics[GB] (2017), only in 2016 net migration to the UK

falls to +248,000 who use up much more in public benefits than they pay in taxes. The cost to

UK of these immigrants is £16.8billion every year. Due to EU laws, UK cannot control the

immigrants from entering the country, especially from the other EU countries. Increase in

number of immigrants from EU, leads to more spending of their budgets on immigrants and

the government left with less money for their own citizens (Slack, 2016). This is the reason

why National Health Service is getting more expensive every year and the government is

forced to cut down the social benefits.

After the Brexit, UK will not be bound to accept all the immigrants from EU, as well as the

immigrants they have to accept under the EU laws. They do not have to provide social

benefits to EU citizens. They can provide better facilities to their citizens.

Counter Argument:

According to the unified big market rules, capital can flow freely between members of the

European Union. This means London as a central position of international finance, and many

foreign investors are also interested in the European market. Thus most of them will choose

London as destination to operate sub-company.

However, the exiting of UK will limit and be strict for foreign people. Thereby, the mobility of

labour force between UK and European countries is restricted, the millions of British and

some industries will be shocked. In the end of 2016, the number of population living in the
UK from other EU countries reached 3.6 million, and about 1.2 million British lived in other

EU countries. It would bring a bad effect on their work and life if deported people.

The reason why many people voted UK should exit EU is because more migrants coming lead

to less job getting for native people. However, a data shows that two thirds of 3.6 million

from EU people have job. It means they also are a big group of consumption for goods or

services in UK, and they can improve the demand of employment as a virtuous circle.

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