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UK

ended 02. December 2025

AMERICA is the last bastion of ambition, one UK trader has said, and he expects more Brits — or ‘Reevesfugees’ as he calls them, referringto Chancellor Rachel Reeves  — to head across the pond in the months ahead as they leave a country that is being strangled by its own Government's inept leadership and extraordinary economic mismanagement.

Trader David Belle spoke in the aftermath of new data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) showing that UK GDP growth is projected to ease to 1.2% in 2026, due to the continued effect of budgetary tightening on consumption and to the drag from global uncertainty.

The OECD predicts UK growth will edge up to 1.3% in 2027, supported by business investment and exports as financial conditions and global trade improve — and a neutral domestic UK monetary policy stance.

Though real GDP growth in the US is also projected to slow to 2% in 2025 and 1.7% in 2026 before picking up to 1.9% in 2027, Belle says the ‘brain drain’ in Starmer's UK is seeing entrepreneurs and wealth creators leave the country on a scale never seen before. He is one, having recently departed the UK for Portugal.

 

6 responses from the Newspage community

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David Belle
Founder and Trader at Fink Money
O to have the ambition and appetite for risk of America. Under this UK Government, the number of Reevesfugees is reaching warp speed. People are escaping a growth-constrained economy because they see a Government out of ideas and out its depth. I am one of them. Before you know it, many of us Brits will be your neighbours, as more and more of us are moving to the US. The US is the last bastion of ambition. Say you want £500k for your startup, US investors, even in this climate, will say it's not a big enough check. In the UK, they will put in £100k, tops. The level of risk and ambition is what drives growth higher and the UK has none of that. It's gone. The UK is rich in talent, but that talent is underpaid, underinvested and overtaxed. The result? A brain drain. US growth was just revised from 3.2% to 3.8% and this makes sense because the best and most innovative companies are based there, creating a hell of a lot of money and wealth. The UK? It has become a shadow of its former self.
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Chris Barry
Director at Thomas Legal
Growth figures in the US have outpaced the UK for some time. The US flew out of the traps post-COVID whilst the UK strolled out at a relaxed pace. The big difference, and what it all boils down to, is national debt. The US have borrowed to fuel their growth whereas the UK, bound by the Chancellor's own fiscal rules, have chosen to grow slowly and borrow less. The US national debt is now at record highs with most projecting it will need to raise the debt ceiling once more to fund interest payments. Currency in the UK has got stronger against the Dollar as a result of the differing strategies.
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Samuel Mather-Holgate
Managing Director & IFA at Mather and Murray Financial
Tax changes and fiscal uncertainty have lead to the Uk slipping down the rankings of leading G7 economies from their enviable position as fastest growing last year. Reeves needs to take a leaf out of Trump's book on economy stimulation.
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Prem Raja
Head of Trading Floor at Currencies 4 You
The OECD forecasts confirm the US economy is significantly stronger than the UK's. The projected growth gap (US: 1.7%-1.9% vs. UK: 1.2%-1.3% in 2026-2027) underscores the greater resilience of the US market. The weak Pound (£1.30 to $1) reflects this divergence, signalling lower confidence in the UK's outlook. While the UK faces a period of structural stagnation marked by low productivity, it remains a major global economy, ranked 6th overall. Its sluggish growth is relative to other advanced peers, not a sign of absolute weakness, but it does reflect domestic challenges like weak investment and fiscal constraints
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Colette Mason
AI Ethics Consultant at Clever Clogs AI
The US at 1.7% growth versus UK at 1.2% looks like a win - but both numbers mask the same brutal reality: we're in the valley before automation abundance kicks in. Job losses will accelerate hard before new roles emerge, and white collar workers are about to discover they're not immune. The gap between losing old jobs and creating new ones is where the pain lives. Both economies are facing the same structural shift: low-grade knowledge work is getting automated out of existence. The US might grow slightly faster, but American workers in admin, basic analysis and routine customer service roles will hit unemployment just as hard as their UK counterparts. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei warns of a potential "white-collar bloodbath" with AI possibly displacing 20% of jobs in the next 1-5 years. The question isn't which economy grows faster, it's which one manages the transition better because the job losses are coming either way, and abundance only follows if we don't botch the deployment.
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Rohit Parmar-Mistry
Founder at Pattrn Data
Let’s get a grip on the numbers. The UK media are painting a 1.7% US growth forecast as a victory lap over the UK’s 1.2%. In reality, this isn't a race between a hare and a tortoise; it’s a race between two exhausted runners. For a dynamic economy like the US, 1.7% is mediocre. It proves that the US is suffering from the same 'neoliberal sclerosis' as the UK, obsessing over stock market highs while the real economy grinds to a halt. The only reason the UK is trailing by that small a margin is because we’ve added self-inflicted anchors to the boat. We have IR35 punishing our flexible workforce, the friction of Brexit and a government doubling down on austerity in disguise. The lesson for the US isn't that you are winning. The lesson is that if you adopt the UK's habit of red tape and under-investment, that 0.5% gap will vanish, and we will both be stuck at the bottom.