"Owing to Britain's recent Brexit-related problems.." -- I'm not aware of any Brexit-related economic problems. On the contrary, all news I've seen since has been positive, to the surprise, and disappointment, of many.
Nations typically publish GDP numbers in their own currency. To compare them you would have to convert them to a common base. Since the Brexit vote result has become known, the GBP has fallen to its lowest level since 1985. This would harm its ranking in a comparison like this.
A low pound is good for British exports and tourism to the UK, but harms British buying power of imported goods. If it's good or bad depends on your viewpoint, I guess.
> A low pound is good for British exports and tourism to the UK
Tourism perhaps, not that good for exports when we have to import all the stuff we use to make the exports and/or most of your exports are service based.
If 75% of the value of a good is from the imported raw materials and the rest is added by the processing applied in the UK then the remaining 25% benefits from the weaker Pound when the good is exported and the rest of is net unaffected by the change except to the extent that capital requirements effectively go up for the value of the intermediate goods in the supply line.
Absolutely but in the short term you have to buy your raw materials at a cost that is now much higher (temporarily) which can be a nasty shock for companies and something we've seen here.
All central banks continuously print money because they consider their currency "too strong" and say this will hurt exports.
At some point the exchange rate falls and suddenly no one is happy with it either. Recent examples are China, GB, Brazil, Venezuela.
The truth is - as with your comment - a surging/falling exchange rate is neither good nor bad. It has positive and negative effects and things will balance out.
Or to say it differently:
An exchange rate is never low, nor is it high, it is precisely where it should be. - Gandalf the Grey
If you print money, you are in control and you do it because you believe that you currency strength is harming your economy somehow: that's like a Sales because you want to get rid of stock to introduce a new model for example.
In this case the other countries are dumping GBP because they think the UK economy will become weaker. That would be like a Sales because your product is flopping.
Same effect, difference cause. One is voluntary on the country/company term, the second is forced by the other actors of the market. The fall of the GBP is significant. The rest of the World is shorting the UK right now and that in itself can be what pushes the UK economy in danger zone.
Printing out money also increases the market cap of the currency; which means that people have more currency in their pockets.
Devaluation of a currency does not.
"That pattern is however a rather unbalanced one, the only sector of the economy that continued to grow was services up by 0.8%; agriculture, manufacturing production and construction all shrank."
What exactly about Brexit spurred this leap in the growth of yoga studios, burger chains, and Star Trek box office returns (A drop in the GBP, as it turns out, for the latter)? Because it seems like losses in everything else is pretty much what economists expected. Manufacturing declined despite a drop in the GBP.
I saw some news about price rises of various technological goods that are imported. That wasn't good news.
And all the news about how the pound has tanked against foreign currencies, which will eventually push up the cost of almost everything. The days in which physical UK exports were made out of commodities that aren't themselves imported are long gone.
Non-physical exports might fare better, but the news about banking and financials has been about how they're doing due diligence on moving to elsewhere in Europe, so that's bad news.
Sure, I've heard some positive news too, but I've heard a lot of negative news. How come you haven't?
The UK pound is down and as such the value of a lot of things in the UK is worth less expressed in US$. That doesn't mean there's a structural problem.
I don't think that anybody on the UK is disappointed as such, more just deeply cautious of any good news being taken too seriously - given that there is still literally no idea what the UK's geopolitical position will be like in two years.
A low pound is good for British exports and tourism to the UK, but harms British buying power of imported goods. If it's good or bad depends on your viewpoint, I guess.