A study by the Centre for European Reform reveals the “troubling” cost of Brexit and says the losses are now too big to ignore.

Figures on the cost of Brexit reported by ITV last week could have given a misleading impression of the cost of leaving the EU.

Real pay set to be £470 lower per worker each year, say top economists. / “We can’t blame Brexit for all of the 5.2 per cent GDP shortfall … but it’s apparent that Brexit is largely to blame,” said John Springford, author of the CEF study.

"Around half of the fiscal hole, and the political instability that comes with that, is down to Brexit," John Springford of the Centre for European Reform.

EU officials have derided the British Government’s ‘chaotic’ approach to negotiations and said the much-reviled ‘Swiss mess’ is ‘not on the table’.

Economy 5.5 per cent smaller than if Leave referendum hadn’t happened, says think tank.

The OBR forecast that Brexit would cost the UK economy 4% of GDP now looks ridiculously optimistic as the damage mounts.

I have started reading the Brexit literature again. A recent paper – ‘What impact is Brexit having on the UK economy?’ by Graham Gudgin, Julian Jessop and Harry Western (GJW) from October 2022 argues there is no hard evidence of harm and that studies that claim to find harm are biased and/or incompetent! In this blog, I consider a few of their points in four areas.

The impact of Brexit on people’s earnings could be ‘substantial’, say experts. / Millions of workers in Britain will be about £1,300 worse off a year due to Brexit, leading experts have said.

Critics say my estimate – that the British economy is around 5 per cent smaller due to Brexit – is implausibly large. This insight tests their scepticism against other ways to estimate the cost of Brexit.

How much has Brexit cost the UK economy? The best publicised estimate is that produced by John Springford of the Centre for European Reform, who concludes that UK GDP is currently about 5% lower than it would have been had we not voted to leave.

The impact on trade overall appears to have been broadly consistent with predictions so far, that on immigration much less negative (and perhaps even positive) and on investment somewhat worse. Perhaps the best estimate of the negative impact on Brexit on UK GDP to date is 2–3% of GDP.

The commercial departments of Brexit-supporting newspapers know the damage being caused to the UK economy, and newspaper advertising revenues, by Brexit. Their editorial colleagues continue to support it anyway.

An honest assessment of Brexit from Fareed Zakaria of CNN... "On virtually every measure, from business investment to exports to employment Britain is falling behind its peers."