£4.3bn a week

The chancellor says that Brexit has cost 8% of UK GDP and, at last, it’s time to realign with the EU

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The biggest “what if?” in modern British history is “what if Britain had voted to stay in the EU?” There is no point in pretending otherwise — in wondering what would have happened if Brexit had been done “properly” or more quickly or enthusiastically.

The problem with Brexit is Brexit: the deliberate erection of barriers between the EU and the UK. And the answer to the what if question is 8% of GDP.

Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, in her Mais lecture in the City of London last week, cited independent studies claiming that 8% was the cost of the 2016 referendum. (The Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research and the US National Bureau of Economic Research have put the hit to UK GDP from Brexit at 6%-8%; it was telling that the chancellor endorsed the upper end of that range as a realistic measure of the damage.)