Research

A report by the Centre for European Reform in December 2022 is the latest to illustrate how Brexit has hit the UK's GDP, investment and trade. 

But John Springford, of the Centre for European Reform, says it’s important to track the UK’s performance against other, similar economies – an approach he calls the “doppelganger method”.“If you compare UK trade after leaving the single market to UK trade before, then you’re not really comparing apples with apples, because you need to compare with other countries. There’s been a big global goods trade boom since the end of the pandemic,” he says.

The UK’s gross domestic product, investment and foreign goods trade have all taken a substantial hit as a result of Brexit, John Springford calculates in an analysis for the Centre for European Reform think-tank.

John Springford at the Centre for European Reform, who has been tracking its increasingly dire impact on the UK economy, released his latest update this week.Based on the performance of similar countries before and after the event, he calculated that the UK’s economy was 5.5 per cent smaller in the second quarter of the year than it otherwise would have been. In real money, economic output was £33bn lower and tax revenues were £12bn lower.

With organizations like the Centre for European Reform painting stark pictures about the GDP hit from Brexit (5.5 percent, according to John Springford) the red flashing lights don’t appear on the verge of dimming. And that means the debate about whether Brexit was such a good idea will continue to rage, while public sentiment gurgles beneath the surface.

John Springfield, deputy director of the Centre for European Reform, said that in the second quarter of 2022, Brexit meant the economy was £33bn smaller than it would have been had the UK voted to remain.He added that Brexit's effect in stifling the economy meant the government had to raise taxes to find an extra £40bn to fund public services.

La economía del Reino Unido era en junio de este año un 5,5% menor de lo que habría sido si el país continuara integrado en la Unión Europea (UE), una ralentización que ha forzado a subir impuestos, según un informe divulgado por el laboratorio de ideas británico Centre for European Reform (CER).

So now we know. Brexit is proving even worse for the UK economy than the official forecast of a 4 per cent hit to GDP over 15 years. It’s already reached 5.5 per cent, according to a study by the Centre for European Reform (CER) think-tank....The CER calculates that Brexit is costing the government £40bn a year in lost revenue, which on ministers’ own figures would allow them to give all public sector workers an inflation-linked pay rise instead of a real-terms cut and still have £12bn to spare. The think tank also cites a very clear Brexit effect on business investment, which hits productivity and therefore the politicians’ holy grail of growth.

The Centre for European Reform’s latest assessment, to be published shortly, which compares the UK’s performance with a “doppelganger” UK of similar countries but unaffected by Brexit, is expected to report significant negative effects on both exports and business investment.