> If you look at the actual data, which everyone should, it doesn't support claims like these and never has. There is no visible impact of Brexit on the economic figures.
That isn’t true… Goldman Sachs and others have stated Brexit has shrunk the UK economy by 5%
Yes it is true. Once again, look at the data. Where is this 5% shrink? Do not listen to discredited people who have an axe to grind. Every single claim that Brexit affected the British economy turns out to be false when checked.
The Goldman Sachs claim is no different. It's full of flatly untrue statements about public data, rather incredibly.
They say: "The UK has significantly underperformed other advanced economies since the 2016 EU referendum"
Actual data: UK growth has tracked that of France and Germany. So which "other advanced economies" are they comparing against? The answer is we don't know because their paper compared the UK against synthetic countries that don't exist and they didn't reveal their method. If you want to see the effects of leaving the EU, you need to look at trends and compare against other (western) EU countries. Not a secret list of fictional countries that appear to be the result of playing games with the data until it fits what the author wanted.
They also say "UK goods trade has ‘declined significantly’ and has ‘underperformed other advanced economies by roughly 15%’ since the referendum." Goods trade is down 2% since 2016 which is not "significant", as the UK is specialized in services. Trade in general has grown strongly. Measured annually, using Chained Volume Measures (CVM) total UK trade was 11% higher in 2023 than in 2016. Trade with EU vs ROW continued on its long term trend, also unaffected by Brexit.
Their paper is just wrong in so many ways. There's a more detailed writeup here:
HN tends to have a lot of trouble with this idea that the institutions are all systematically lying about this issue because of what it says about our society, credentialing and so on. But the data is public. You just have to look it up instead of trusting "experts".
OBR and others say Brexit has a detrimental effect on the British economy… the evidence you quote to refute that comes from a pro-Brexit site!
> From 2018 to 2023, compared to G7
> UK goods exports performed 15% worse
> Goods imports 8% worse (current prices)
> UK services exports performed better at 17% growth, but behind EU (23%) and Germany (20%)
> Services imports (12% growth) were middle of the G7 pack (above Italy, Japan and France)
OBR is wrong, like the other institutions that embarrassed themselves with many false predictions in the past. How many times must I repeat this? That's why people still arguing against Brexit are forced into manipulative statements like this:
> From 2018 to 2023, compared to G7
You can't measure the impact of leaving the EU by comparing British goods exports with Japan and the USA. That isn't controlling for other factors.
To understand the impact of leaving the EU you have to compare like with like: UK before/after and UK with nearby western European countries which stayed in. Not "all EU members", which includes post-Soviet states still catching up to western GDP levels. Not the G7, which includes members that were never in the EU to start with. You can compare to places like France, the Netherlands, Germany, and as your own citation shows, there's no significant difference when you do that. That is the final and full story. Zero effect of leaving.
The only axe being ground here is the people who still, ten years on, cannot accept that the anti-Brexit arguments were wrong. All I'm doing is responding to these false claims.
Plenty of well established credible organisations including many city institutions say Brexit was damaging for the British economy but I’m supposed to dismiss them because some random Brexit supporter on HN says they’re wrong
That isn’t true… Goldman Sachs and others have stated Brexit has shrunk the UK economy by 5%
https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/business-economics/economi...
And there’s plenty of anecdotal evidence of many small producers suffering as they can no longer afford to export to Europe