Brexit Ten Years On: The Economy

mmooreds about 4 hours ago 72 commentsRead Article on ukandeu.ac.uk

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Discussion (72 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

grahar64•about 4 hours 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•about 4 hours 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•about 3 hours 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!

dudul•about 4 hours 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"

kibibu•about 3 hours ago

You're saying the bus didn't exist?

dudul•about 3 hours ago

Reading is hard I guess. I'm saying Brexit was not sold as being positive for the economy. Yes the bus probably existed, and as I said, the argument was made that the excess in EU contribution would be spent domestically instead. But improving the economy was not the main argument of the Leave. They always mostly acknowledged that it would be a bit unknown, but whatever happened would be worth it if it meant more sovereignty.

rm445•about 4 hours 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•about 4 hours 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.

Zigurd•about 4 hours 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.

mytailorisrich•about 3 hours ago

Regarding the UK specifically, very few people chose to study in the EU when they could while many in the EU wanted to study in the UK. British unis are a huge asset to the country that also brings a lot of money from foreign students. Same for young people wanting to come work in UK/London.

Frankly, I think the "harm" done to young British people is vastly overblown and more symbolic than actual.

AlexandrB•about 4 hours 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...

gpt5•about 4 hours 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.

derriz•about 3 hours 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.

bborud•about 3 hours ago

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

janice1999•about 4 hours 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.

bborud•about 4 hours 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.

mytailorisrich•about 4 hours 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.

vrganj•about 4 hours 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.

jimjohnny123•about 3 hours ago

You may call it self-harm, but I think we need to consider Britain's relatively pragmatic / less than enthusiastic membership of the EU. For a start, Britain has a completely different legal system to the rest of Europe (common law vs. civil law). That was bound to create tensions.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Legal_systems_in_Eur...

mytailorisrich•about 4 hours ago

That isn't true, and a ridiculous take. There are pros and cons to both being in and out of the EU.

Uhhrrr•about 3 hours 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•about 2 hours 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.

Uhhrrr•about 2 hours 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...

haaz•about 3 hours 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.

jsbisviewtiful•about 2 hours 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.

soco•about 2 hours 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.

tremarley•about 3 hours ago

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

nostrademons•about 4 hours 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.

cherryteastain•about 3 hours 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

kev009•about 4 hours ago

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

nostrademons•about 4 hours 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.

kev009•about 3 hours ago

That seems orthogonal to being part of a league of nations. In practice it should be easier to reduce regulation with increased sovereignty, but again there is no direct causation. The benefit of a league is collective bargaining, and potential efficiencies like standardization. The downsides are effectively the unintended consequences of that.

foxygen•about 3 hours ago

Are we pretending the US/NATO hasn't been interfering with the world's economy for the past decades? Or free trade here means the US being the sheriff of the world, forcing everyone else to use their currency, and bringing "freedom and democracy" to whoever thinks of challenging that?

ece•about 4 hours 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.

madaxe_again•about 4 hours ago

They evidently mean it as in the opposite of protectionism.

_HMCB_•about 4 hours ago

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

Zigurd•about 4 hours ago

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

water-data-dude•about 4 hours ago

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

ako•about 4 hours ago

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

bryanrasmussen•about 4 hours ago

Anything you can do I can do better just makes me think of Annie Oakley https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WO23WBji_Z0

lenerdenator•about 4 hours 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.

notahacker•about 4 hours 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...

lenerdenator•about 4 hours ago

> soft power, public image

Yes and no.

There's always been an undercurrent of contempt for the US, particularly from Europe. Even during the Clinton and Obama years. There's no satisfying that.

ToucanLoucan•about 4 hours 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.

lenerdenator•about 4 hours ago

Oh, they've got that there too. GB News, TikTok, all the rest.

pstuart•about 4 hours ago

One can take some hope that Germany recovered from its descent into fascism. But that was in a time where there was no social media and other brainwashing technologies embedded into the population.

My hopes are tempered, to say the least.

pstuart•about 4 hours 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.

vrganj•about 4 hours 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...

jimjohnny123•about 4 hours 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...

arjie•about 4 hours ago

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

mr_sturd•about 4 hours ago

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

frereubu•about 4 hours 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.

rtkwe•about 4 hours ago

Not even that but one of the major issues with the first referendum was that Brexit was ill defined so the pro camp was able to promise basically anything as the final status and everyone had a different idea of what the actual outcome would be. Any vote without the actual final deal on the table or at least a guarantee that the final deal will get a vote will kind of inevitably lead to the same "wait I voted for that?!" that happened when the Real Brexit (tm) finally came out.

I'm almost certain that the final Brexit would not have been approved and pretty equally certain people would be vastly unhappy with the requirement to rejoin.

mytailorisrich•about 4 hours 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.

hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm•about 4 hours 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.

vrganj•about 4 hours ago

Spain and Poland seem to be doing quite well?

shevy-java•about 4 hours 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).