The Impact Of Brexit On The UK Economy - Reviewing The Evidence

9th July 2023

Jonathan Portes, Professor of Economics and Public Policy King's College London writing for The Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) looks at the evidence for the damage to the UK economy caused by BREXT.

Two-thirds of the British public think Brexit has damaged the economy, while even among Leave voters only one in five think the impact has been positive. This column looks at the evidence across three key dimensions - trade, migration and investment - as well as the overall macroeconomic impacts.

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.

One year ago, CEPR published a summary of the evidence on the economic impacts of Brexit on the UK economy (Portes 2022). Since then, the British public appears to have made up its mind on this topic: two-thirds think Brexit has damaged the economy, while even among Leave voters only one in five think the impact has been positive (UK in a Changing Europe 2023).

The vast majority of economists would agree (and many would add a resounding ‘we told you so'). But that does not mean that we fully understand how, and to what extent, Brexit has affected the UK economy. In this column, I summarise the evidence across three key dimensions - trade, migration and investment - and then examine recent evidence on the overall macroeconomic impacts.

Read the full article HERE

Comment
This article once again shows up how few proper explanations were given by our politicians explaining what would happen in the event of the Leave vote. For example how many voters knew much if anything about the Horizon programme among many others that gave many advantages to the UK not least of which the peripheral areas like Highland that gained much from European funding.