why do you think so many Northern voters, wanted brexit because they are fed of years and years of the decline of the industrial North......problem is, that was caused by govt policy not Brexit -brexit will only make it worse
That's true to some extent. There is an age group that know it's happened. There is also an older one that knows it's not that simple. It started with lack of investment in a lot of industries. At one point British Steel lent money instead as profits were higher. Then asset stripping. An odd example of that is the equivalent of BAe buying up Vickers for some of it's work and then bulldozing the factory. The other type simply bought companies up and sold bits of it loosing the rest. All sorts was going on. Having had a cosy life for years just selling into the UK many weren't up to competing with imports. This sums some it up
Easiest answer to that graph is to ignore trade deficits. The USA has been doing that as well with the same effects.
Simple view of that agreement
https://www.thebalance.com/bretton-woods-system-and-1944-agreement-3306133
The money market used to have raids on the various currencies and gov's bought to keep the price stable. The promise to pay the bearer etc on a GBP no longer meant what it did.
Then removal of exchange controls
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exchange_Controls_in_the_United_Kingdom
https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/-/m...7/the-uk-exchange-control-a-short-history.pdf
Really it all comes down to lack of investment and labour rates and in some respects inability to compete for various reasons. Eg Steel, the uk hasn't got much in the line of iron ore. Companies were sized to suite their domestic markets. Say one grew and sold significantly into a larger market they would probably be bought up. They may be anyway.
Globalisation sums it up in some respects. A benefit of it is seen as improved living standards where the "work" is done but that puts up prices eventually but also creates another market where things can be sold and the work that allowed that may start going elsewhere. It is in some areas.
The other problem is that in most cases manufacture needs a lot less labour. No point in lots of dockers unloading ships manually when most arrives in containers. Build big ships - depends on the size of the facility and labour rated and local costs of materials.
Might give people some idea of the reasoning behind the EU and the Euro and why Trump was elected. The USA's trade deficit has been running at around $5 trillion. The EU
https://tradingeconomics.com/european-union/balance-of-trade
Forgot to add everybody wants to sell into the USA. EU, China and etc. UK too but what?