It’s a very good, thoughtful and well-balanced look at the impact of Brexit over the last ten years.
There are some telling insights. One in particular struck me. In the run-up to the referendum, a poll of professional economists revealed that no less than 88% expected the UK’s national income to be negatively affected in five years after leaving the EU and the single market. Just 4% thought the impact would be positive. The Johnsons say:
“That might come as a surprise to those who remember that there always seemed to be an economist ready to appear on either side of the argument. That provided a false impression.”
This, in my opinion, was the singular fault of the media and the search for so-called ‘balance’.
And this one:
"A second strand of the economic argument [after most economists being opposed] related to the fiscal consequences. This, arguably, proved far more important in the debate. In a purely static sense, not being in the EU saves money because the UK was a net contributor to the EU budget, to the tune of some £8bn a year in 2015. That is a much easier number to understand than the range of possible effects on growth resulting from the operation of different economic forecasting models."
The forecasts were complex, hard to understand and easily dismissed by Brexiters. They took a bit of thinking about. Most people don't understand GDP and simply couldn't get their heads around it. I remember speaking to an otherwise intelligent engineer some years before 2016 during the financial crash, who had no idea at all what Britain's GDP was at the time.
If you don't know what a number is, being told it might be reduced by 4-8% is meaningless.
And on deregulation, the article says "while it is true that the UK has more freedom to adjust regulations as a result of Brexit, there is no evidence of a concerted desire to do so by the current government, nor was there significant action by the Conservative government of 2019–24. If anything, the political mood, including within Reform, is that there is a case for using those freedoms to increase state intervention and support for industry, rather than for aggressive deregulation."
"The UK has not become ‘Singapore on Thames’, nor is there any sign that it is headed in that direction."
The main reasons for the lack of divergence are that to deregulate would create more barriers to trade with the EU, and in addition, the TCA’s ‘level playing field’ commitments, designed to ensure fair competition through maintenance of existing labour, social, environmental and climate standards, and on subsidies, offer another big obstacle.
Which is what I have always believed. There is no political will for Britain to become a sweatshop with low or non-existent labour standards, and the last thing British industry is crying out for is more trade barriers. The Brexiters who wanted Singapore-on-Thames were always going to be badly disappointed.
The Johnsons concede there were "plausible reasons to support the UK leaving the EU" but the argument now is "over whether that was a price worth paying." It's clear now that most people don't think it was.
What is no longer plausible, they add, is that you cannot now claim there was no price, and I think this is now an accepted fact by every economist.
The article ends with a long quote from Ryan Bourne, who was a member of Economists for Brexit in 2016 and argued strongly in favour of leaving the EU. Last year, he came out with a mea culpa following publication of an authoritative report from the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) in Massachusetts, USA, calculating an 8% hit to Britain's GDP so far.
It was that which triggered Bourne’s apparent contrition and reversal on Brexit. I covered it at the time (HERE). He is a British economist and now at the free-market Cato Institute in Washington DC. In November 2025, he wrote this:
“I was part of the small band of Economists for Brexit. We argued, in good faith, that disentangling ourselves from the EU would unlock long-term economic potential via more policy freedom. Nine years on, we cannot pretend things have gone well so far.
"The simple facts show the UK has grown more slowly than Italy, France and Japan too since 2016, despite their legion problems. Only Germany and Canada have fared worse than us in the G7. A raft of techniques that average other countries show us lagging. And other EU countries suffered more trade friction and a growth headwind from our exit, tempering any Brexit cost from these comparisons.
"The microeconomic, firm-level data is crystal clear that Brexit has had a significant, depressive impact … the more EU-exposed a company was, the more likely it cut investment and slowed hiring after the referendum. By 2023, average business investment was 12 per cent lower than otherwise. Productivity within firms was 3 to 4 per cent weaker.
"Roughly half of firms listed Brexit as a top source of uncertainty for years after the vote. Yes, remainer foot-dragging in parliament exacerbated this uncertainty. But wherever you ascribe blame, managers devoted hours each week to planning for new post-Brexit customs arrangements, regulation and precautionary stockpiles.
"This displacement activity weakened innovation, delayed investment and distracted managers from core business.
"Such evidence cannot be dismissed as Project Fear. It is data. Brexit was a constitutional choice about where laws and regulations were made. My judgment was that Britain’s messy parliamentary democracy would be more effective in error-correcting than Brussels’ bureaucracy, in the long run. But thus far, we have endured Brexit’s downsides, through new trade frictions and protracted uncertainty, with any upsides paling in comparison.
"Brexit did not cause Britain’s growth malaise, but it undoubtedly deepened it. Nor did it create our fiscal woes, although it worsened them too. Denial about this helps no one. Indeed, a successful sovereign economic policy demands taking responsibility and facing the world as it is, not as we wish it to be.”
Bourne joins Roland Smith, about whom I wrote last week. They are among the more logical Brexiteers who at least can admit their mistakes, even the most serious ones. Too many others are still clinging to the idea that Brexit needs Nigel Farage to make a success of it.
He won't, even if he ever becomes PM, a prospect which is looking ever more unlikely as he sinks in an ocean of sleaze. Let's hope Count Binface defeats him on 13 August.
