It’s time to face facts – we are all the poorer for Brexit

Editorial: A full four years after Brexit came into effect, the balance sheet is not looking good, whether it is for trade, investment or standards of living

No wonder the government is doing so poorly in the polls that it seems almost to have left the field in advance of the coming election (PA)

Things have come to a pretty pass when the most authoritative government response to new figures testifying to the negative economic impact of Brexit is to insist that everything could have been so very much worse. Thus Kemi Badenoch, the business and trade secretary, cited doom-laden forecasts of “inevitable decline”, which, she said, “have been proved false”.

And, yes, thank goodness, the economic meltdown predicted by some did not happen – quite, with a very near miss, and a political crisis, in relation to Northern Ireland. But the lack of a complete meltdown, either in the weeks immediately after the UK’s departure from the EU took effect, or in the four years since, can be only limited consolation in the light of the latest assessment.

The report, compiled by John Springford, an associate of the Centre for European Reform, concludes that Brexit has opened a hole of almost £100bn in annual UK exports, which is making the country worse off than if it had remained in the European Union. The estimates show that missed growth in goods and services exports means that trade is running at 30 per cent below what it could have been without Brexit.