For a decade, Brexit’s defenders have insisted the warnings were exaggerated and the pain temporary. The latest evidence shows the opposite. Brexit hasn’t been a one-off hit followed by recovery – it has quietly, relentlessly drained the UK economy year after year.
The headline numbers are brutal. UK GDP is now 6–8 per cent smaller than it would have been by 2025 – worse than forecast, not better. That is a permanent loss of national income, not a blip.
Investment has collapsed. UK business investment is 18 per cent lower than in comparable economies, as firms put money on hold or moved it elsewhere. Employment and productivity are both around 4 per cent lower, locking in weaker wage growth and lower living standards.
As Liz Webster put it in what may be the clearest summary yet of Brexit’s damage, this wasn’t accidental. The losses “accumulated year after year”, driven by uncertainty, new trade friction and the deliberate unravelling of economic integration.
The hidden cost inside firms was staggering. Nearly one in ten CFOs spent more than six hours a week for years dealing with Brexit fallout – time and money burned on preparing for what Webster calls “economic sabotage”, instead of growth or innovation.
And the killer finding? The firms most exposed to the EU – Britain’s fastest-growing, most productive businesses before Brexit – became the most damaged afterwards. Brexit punished the very companies that powered growth.
This leaves Britain as a rare modern case study: a rich country that deliberately raised barriers to trade and cooperation and paid the price. The result is clear and inescapable – lower growth, lower productivity, lower wages and permanent relative decline.
It is also a flashing red warning to any country flirting with economic nationalism, trade wars or the fantasy that sovereignty can replace integration.
The economic cost of Brexit is no longer theoretical. It’s measurable, compounding – and devastating.