---
title: The Real Toll Brexit Has Taken on the UK Economy
description: Ten years on from the referendum, the actual economic evidence has had time to accumulate. Here is what the studies, checked against each other, genuinely show.
author: Dr Marina Nani (Editor-in-Chief)
date: 2026-08-27T11:30:00.000Z
updated: 2026-08-27T11:30:29.081Z
canonical: https://www.sovereignmagazine.com/article/the-real-toll-brexit-has-taken-on-the-uk-economy
image: https://cdn.nanimediahouse.com/pexels-big-ben-and-red-double-decker-bus-reflected-in-a-london-pudd-34750171.jpg
categories: Economy
content_type: Analysis
region: United Kingdom, Europe
publication: Sovereign Magazine
access: members
schema_type: Article
---

Ten years on from the referendum, the economic evidence has had time to accumulate, and it points in one consistent direction. Every serious study of the UK economy since 2016 finds that Brexit has made it smaller than it would otherwise have been. Where the studies genuinely disagree is by how much, and that disagreement is worth understanding properly rather than collapsing into a single number.

The OBR's position has held steady since 2020 and remains the most cited government estimate. It projects that Brexit will reduce UK long-run productivity by 4 per cent relative to remaining in the EU, driven by UK-EU trade volumes settling around 15 per cent lower than they otherwise would have been. The OBR's chairman, Richard Hughes, told the BBC in 2021 that this long-run hit to GDP would ultimately outweigh the damage done by the pandemic. As of the OBR's most recent review, around two-fifths of that 4 per cent effect had already worked its way into the economy, with the rest still to come over a 15-year adjustment period that began in 2020.

Beyond the OBR, a genuine cluster of independent institutions has reached broadly similar conclusions, though rarely the same number. The Centre for European Reform, using a modelling technique that builds a synthetic "twin" economy from countries that did not leave the EU, estimated UK GDP was already 5.5 per cent smaller than that counterfactual by mid-2022, with investment down 11 per cent and goods trade down 7 per cent. Goldman Sachs put the current underperformance at around 6 per cent in a 2026 analysis, while the National Bureau of Economic Research has placed its own estimate at the higher end, 6 to 8 per cent. Panmure Liberum's chief economist Simon French estimates a more moderate 2.5 per cent, equivalent to around £30 billion in foregone tax revenue every year, citing weaker business investment, underperforming trade and a persistent "uncertainty premium" on UK financial assets. The National Institute of Economic and Social Research has put the loss at 2 to 6 per cent depending on the year measured, and economist Jonathan Portes of King's College London has argued for a more modest 2 to 3 per cent. Lay the range out in full and it runs from roughly 2.5 per cent to 8 per cent of GDP, a genuine four to five-fold spread reflecting real disagreement over modelling assumptions rather than a single settled figure.

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