Brexit Ten Years On: The Economy

https://ukandeu.ac.uk/brexit-ten-years-on-the-economy/

by mooreds • 1 month ago

59 102 1 month ago

ukandeu.ac.uk

Zigurd4• 1 month ago

Just when the UK thought they had done the biggest self own in history, 'Merica says hold muh beer.

water-data-dude• 1 month ago

America can do anything the UK can do, but bigger and better!

ako• 1 month ago

Makes me think of Peter Tosh: "Anything you can do, I can do it better, I'm the toughest".

IAmBroom3• 1 month ago

And Texas will double down on that claim for themselves.

They even disconnected from the (essentially) country-wide power networks, so they could build something Texan... from which several people die every cold snap.

lenerdenator5• 1 month ago

I still wouldn't put it at the level of Brexit.

The US actually has enough weight as an economy to have some bargaining power at trade negotiations. Now, whether the negotiator is working in good faith or not is another matter, but if the US suddenly stopped doing business with an individual country, it would likely cause the other side at least some problems.

The UK does not have the weight the US does, and sanctioned itself from all of its largest trading partners in one stroke. If it wants back into the EU (which would likely be the smart thing to do), serious concessions will have to be made. Like, "How much do you really like the pound sterling?" concessions.

Also, Reform's gaining steam, so those concessions are unlikely to be given.

ToucanLoucan2• 1 month ago

I still wouldn't put it at the level of Brexit.

Perhaps not yet, but we have at minimum 2 and a half years of the Trump Family Circus to contend with, and they've gotten a lot destroyed in what time they've had so far.

And, Trump isn't the real problem. Anti-intellectualism here has hit it's zenith. Fully a third of our country is so propagandized and media-illiterate that they can't really be said to share a reality with the rest of us anymore.

I don't know how we can fix this. Talk radio, Fox News, and social media may well have damaged our civil life beyond repair. And they're still doing it.

pstuart2• 1 month ago

I think's actually worse than Brexit. The destruction of institutions and the industrial weaponization of partisanship has done significant damage. Add to that the tariff circus and the alienation of every single fucking foreign power with the lingering effect of demonstrating that long term trust is no longer possible.

We are on the cusp of a full fascist takeover and the only thing possibly preventing that is the incompetence and self-dealing at the top.

I expect to get downvoted by the partisans here, but I stand by my words and would love to be shown wrong with credible evidence, but that is extremely doubtful.

notahacker3• 1 month ago

What America has done to its soft power, public image, national security and scientific research goes a bit beyond introduce a few semi-permanent non-tariff barriers to trade and lose some votes on some decision making bodies though. Though it's certainly done that too...

vrganj4• 1 month ago

We miss you, British friends. Come back home! <3

In related news:

A British poll shows that a new Brexit referendum would reverse the vote that led to Britain’s departure from the European Union a decade ago.

Fifty-two per cent of Britons think the UK should rejoin the EU, according to an Ipsos survey of 1,137 British adults conducted between May 14 and May 20.

https://www.straitstimes.com/world/europe/new-referendum-wou...

mr_sturd• 1 month ago

If there were another vote, the media circus, and manipulation via social media would make sure we stay out.

frereubu• 1 month ago

I'm not as sure as you about the result, but I do agree that the campaigning would be absolutely awful to go through, and would reopen a lot of really deep wounds on all sides. It's all very well saying you'd like to rejoin when someone asks you on the street, but an entirely different thing if there was a months-long campaign to have to get through.

mytailorisrich7• 1 month ago

Considering how the EU and the UK have evolved, I suspect that today staying out of the EU would get more votes than Brexit did back in 2016.

jimjohnny1233• 1 month ago

Also worth mentioning:

Poll Suggests Most Britons Oppose Giving Up Brexit Powers for Closer EU Ties

https://www.theportugalnews.com/news/2026-06-08/poll-suggest...

hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm• 1 month ago

The EU is not exactly doing much better. None of them truly ever recovered from 2008 or 2020. It is either stagnation or managed decline.

vrganj4• 1 month ago

Spain and Poland seem to be doing quite well?

arjie• 1 month ago

Well, those half are likely under the impression they can rewind things, but realistically that is not on the table.

rm445• 1 month ago

The EU has mildly outperformed the UK in overall economic growth by perhaps 1 percentage point over the last 5-6 years, i.e. ~7% vs ~6%. While of course both massively underperformed the USA.

It's hard to avoid concluding that the actual effects of Brexit have been smaller than this kind of analysis suggests, and while we squabble about such things our countries are missing opportunity after opportunity.

LikesPwsh• 1 month ago

Brexit harming the growth of both UK and EU is another perfectly valid interpretation of those numbers.

I'm sure there's a little truth to both, and noise from all kinds of other factors.

AlexandrB• 1 month ago

I don't know about that. Canada also tracked the UK more closely than the US and it was not involved in Brexit[1]. The US just did really well during this time.

[1] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?end=2024...

Zigurd4• 1 month ago

It's not all noise. Being able to live, work, or study anywhere in the Schengen zone has tremendous value. But it doesn't show up in GDP numbers. Brexit harmed the young people of UK, and they hate it.

mytailorisrich7• 1 month ago

The UK has done alright and London has continued to do very well. Considering that there wasn't, and essentially still isn't, any plans on how to make the most (or anything...) of Brexit, that's telling, IMHO.

vrganj4• 1 month ago

There is no making "the most" out of Brexit the same way there isn't a way to make "the most" out of sawing your own leg off. It was completely unforced self-mutilation. The fact they're still hobbling on is commendable, but it's still much worse than they would've been off otherwise.

gpt52• 1 month ago

If you compare UK to its equivalent developed countries (France, Germany, Italy, etc. ), without including the developing EU economies of Eastern Europe, you get that the UK’s GDP growth has outperformed the rest since brexit happened.

bborud4• 1 month ago

you're going to have to quote sources and explain the math.

derriz2• 1 month ago

Have you a source? Using IMF data for GDP per capita PPP, the UK's growth has underperformed that of France, Spain and Italy over the last 10 years. In 2016 the UK's per-capita GDP in international dollars exceeded that of France by approx. $1600, estimates for 2026 are showing France being ahead by about $1000.

bborud4• 1 month ago

The real delta is the delta between what was promised and what was delivered.

Pretending that the outcome wasn't so bad by moving the goalposts closer is, quite frankly, dishonest.

janice1999• 1 month ago

Many of the UK's post-Brexit trade deals have been the previous EU one with a slight tweak. Even the much touted US beef deal was built on an EU scheme and was rather minimal at that. It's not surprising then that the EU and UK are similar. The lack of UK growth over the EU is a big indictment of Brexit from an economic perspective.

nostrademons3• 1 month ago

It's almost like the academics who said that free-trade and globalization were net benefits to the economy were right, and then reversing globalization and shutting borders simply reverses those gains.

The interesting part is that while the benefits of globalization were not evenly distributed (part of the reason for the populist backlash against it), reversing it does not seem to benefit the people who were harmed by it. Maybe somebody who actually lives there can correct me, but the working class has seemingly not been lifted back into the middle class just because borders were closed. The factories have not come back. Instead it seems like capital owners benefitted most handsomely from globalization, and then de-globalization just entrenches their gains. And in terms of material gains and consumption, people just do without and all end up poorer.

Important lessons for America, which is about to embark on its own de-globalization adventure.

_HMCB_• 1 month ago

I like the first part of your username. Not so much the latter.

kev0092• 1 month ago

The term globalization is doing a lot of work in this comment, what does it mean to you?

nostrademons3• 1 month ago

The idea that governments should get out of the way of free trade across borders, and that the policies they make only serve to make the economy less efficient. The backdrop for the economy should be the world, and not the nation. Within it, firms should feel free to transact with whoever gets the job done best.

madaxe_again• 1 month ago

They evidently mean it as in the opposite of protectionism.

ece• 1 month ago

I think in this context it would mean not stopping movement of labor to an extreme or having tariffs, but taxing the unequal gains and having social programs that help everyone keep up in an economy.

cherryteastain• 1 month ago

reversing it does not seem to benefit the people who were harmed by it

Second and third laws of thermodynamics - our universe has no (macroscopic scale) reversible processes and every irreversible process causes losses

warumdarum2• 1 month ago

Those same academics preached that culture is irrelevant folklore, while it showed itself as incompatibel with democracy and western values in experimented on reality. The end of his story indeed..

grahar64• 1 month ago

"The question was never whether this would involve costs"

Brexit was sold as being positive for the economy. The proponents drove a bus around saying they would get 350 million back. It was largely advertised as a net positive for the economy

pyeri• 1 month ago

It was totally a rigged referendum, that bus hoarding propaganda somehow worked and the masses fell for the lies. But a great number didn't and it was barely lost by a few percentage points. David Cameron should have stayed and battled it out instead of resigning.

kayo_20211030• 1 month ago

David Cameron may be the biggest idiot in almost 300 years of British Prime Ministers, and there's been a few beauties. He really could have done a better job with the whole referendum business. Up/Down only. No "by a majority of...". No requirement for a second referendum on the terms of the disengagement agreement. Asking him to stay around would have been like asking the driver that drove you over the cliff to drive you home. And then there was that other beauty, Boris!

mike_hearn5• 1 month ago

The bus was correct. The NHS budget has gone up by more than £350M since then even if you ignore the huge COVID boosts.

dudul3• 1 month ago

This is incorrect, the official Vote Leave campaign focused very heavily on immigration and overall sovereignty. Remain was the campaign highlighting risks for the economy.

Of course the argument was made re: EU contributions staying "home" to be allocated domestically, but the economy was always shrugged away as a "necessary unknown to take back control"

kibibu2• 1 month ago

You're saying the bus didn't exist?

JojoFatsani• 1 month ago

It was sold as that but it was heavily xenophobia-coded

warumdarum2• 1 month ago

Brexit was a "stop migration by getting out of europe" thing. That was how it was sold, that was how it was ordered. That was not how it was delivered. This is also why the same people get the same votes against the boats again. If a democratic system can not offer and deliver what the people want - the people will vote for system dismantling till they get it.

oliwarner• 1 month ago

It was not sold on one thing.

Immigration was definitely a factor, but there were a lot of people —despite strong expert opposition— saying it would be an economic golden age. Being able to trade with everyone on our own terms. Being free our exporters of red tape while maintaining our existing trade and supply routes.

Of course this was wrong. 49% of the country was screaming it was wrong. But there were enough people swayed on moderate promises that things could be better.

shevy-java• 1 month ago

"Services firms, especially in regulated sectors, lost important market access rights. Free movement ended."

You mean Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson lied to the people?

I am ... shocked. Ok not really.

The strange thing is that Nigel keeps on lying - and people still (!!!) buy his lies. It is a fascinating case study. I concede that Nigel is good at rhetorics, but it also seems as if people want to be lied to. Otherwise they would have realised they were duped.

For the other EU member states, having UK no longer torpedo decisions, is actually great. The EU is way too huge anyway - and sadly, wants to expand more and more. That's also going to lead to a break up situation. And populists such as Nigel will take advantage of that (if the UK were in the EU).

tremarley• 1 month ago

Some would say Brexit - January 31, 2020 is the UK's independence day.

IAmBroom3• 1 month ago

As munksbeer posted...

https://www.reaction.life/p/britain-looks-like-brexit

It's /s, BTW.

Uhhrrr2• 1 month ago

For comparison, Remain advocates predicted a fall in GDP of 3.6-6.0%:

https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/brexit-would-put-our-...

MagnumOpus• 1 month ago

So it seems like they have been spot on? TFA quotes the OBR as estimating a 4% negative impact and the CEFR estimate of -5.5% cumulative impact.

Uhhrrr2• 1 month ago

I should mention that the Remain advocate estimates of 3.6-6.0 were for a time frame of two years: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/hm-treasury-analy...

mike_hearn5• 1 month ago

There has been no negative impact. Every claim of negative impact falls apart when investigated. I wrote about one example on another thread:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48473246

The actual data doesn't support any of these estimates.

Note the response of the guy I was arguing with. Faced with the reality that the sources he/she trusted are lying, they rejected the honest source they asked for because of "bias". This kind of motivated reasoning is everywhere in this debate. Quite annoying.

haaz• 1 month ago

Glad to see that people on hackernews know more about the costs of EU regulation than Jim Ratcliffe, James Dyson, Tim Martin etc.

Just look at the AI act, GDPR, and how the EU shot their tech sector in the foot with these.

If being in the EU was so great then why don't Norway or Switzerland join?

I am an EU citizen and it is extremely convenient in my personal life (common currency, no visas, my sim card works everywhere) but I'm also aware that the most effective governments are city states such as Singapore or heavily decentralized states like UAE, Switzerland, Denmark, even China and up until recently the US and UK. The EU creates far more regulations, red tape, and friction than the single market removes, and tying the fate of the UK to dying economies like Germany and France does no one any good.

soco• 1 month ago

...heavily decentralized Switzerland...? What does this even mean? Care to explain, if there is anything to explain of course? And no-regulations Switzerland? I don't know the other countries but if at least one example is completely imaginary, the rest kinda lose their strength in my view.

jsbisviewtiful• 1 month ago

If being in the EU was so great then why don't Norway or Switzerland join?

I'm not an economist nor am I an European citizen, but both of those countries have very successful and wealthy economies. It doesn't seem necessary or advantageous for them to join the EU as, if anything, introducing a second currency and new laws that are tied to many other countries' prosperity would just risk destabilization. If the situation for either country changes in the future, it might make more sense for them to join at that point, but as of the moment they have no need or widespread desire to. Last I heard, Switzerland is even voting on whether to cap their population, which would prob not fly in the EU.

zoenolan• 1 month ago

If being in the EU was so great, then why don't Norway or Switzerland join?

https://www.ft.com/content/5c8a871f-9a49-45f4-9ac0-543a608a5...

https://archive.is/dCYJG

elAhmo• 1 month ago

Good read for people in the future reading this and seeing so many comments that imply Brexit wasn’t that bad.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/jun/14/how-uk-econ...

Brexit Ten Years On: The Economy

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