The UK has a well-documented decades-long 20% labour productivity gap with the US, Germany and France. With Brexit potentially creating extra challenges in overcoming this competitive disadvantage, the UK could fall even further behind. But if you are an optimist it could also be a moment for the UK to take a giant leap forward as it has done in the past when confronted with no other choice. Britain has been very good at doing this recently but it could be even better and Brexit could galvanise a new era of even more productive collaboration between public institutions and private business. There are many sectors of the UK economy that have bright sparks of world class performance but McKinsey Global Institute Productivity research shows very clearly they are held back by vexing bottlenecks.

The UK has a well-documented decades-long 20% labour productivity gap with the US, Germany and France. With Brexit potentially creating extra challenges in overcoming this competitive disadvantage, the UK could fall even further behind. But if you are an optimist it could also be a moment for the UK to take a giant leap forward as it has done in the past when confronted with no other choice. Britain has been very good at doing this recently but it could be even better and Brexit could galvanise a new era of even more productive collaboration between public institutions and private business. There are many sectors of the UK economy that have bright sparks of world class performance but McKinsey Global Institute Productivity research shows very clearly they are held back by vexing bottlenecks.