Comment by mike_hearn | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mike_hearn | Hacker News Reader

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Yup. Sadly, discussion of Brexit on HN is trash tier. Almost every claim about it you'll find here is completely wrong. Not in the sense of differing values or priorities, but in a "this is totally made up" kind of way. It's really concerning that so many people's understanding of the UK and Europe have suffered such a huge rupture with reality. The map is not the territory!

Leaving the EU had no effect on the British economy. Not positive, not negative. Even the trade balance with the EU merely continued along its long term trend, so apparently the single market wasn't delivering any value in the end. The closest thing you can find to an economic impact was the currency dump that happened the moment the result was called, but the economy did fine in the post-referendum years and so those traders who panicked just took a bath and the currency recovered later. Not that a currency devaluation is such a bad thing for the UK anyway, its exports could use the help.

Even some non-economic impacts failed to materialize, in both directions. The UK rejoined the Horizon research programme (supposedly a "cherry" that would be lost), but also the reduction in immigration that voters were promised didn't happen either, in fact immigration went into overdrive.

A lot of people who support the EU don't realize any of this, partly because the news doesn't report on things that don't happen so they never hear about it. But mostly it's because they conflate predictions with reality. For example, there's someone saying in this thread that "the narrative was pretty catastrophic" followed by "I don't know how things panned out". And when I pointed out this lack of impact less than two weeks ago here, I got a reply that cited another pile of predictions as a refutation:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43469356

It's a systemic problem that crops up in other areas too. During COVID modeling predictions were regularly repeated as if they'd already happened, and you see the same mental slippage in climate change discourse. The line between "we think this might happen", "this will happen" and "this has already happened" blurs to nothing.

Can you provide some citations / documentation of your claims about "no effect"?

As a non-EU / non-UK reader I went searching for more detailed analysis after reading your post. The first detailed analysis I found was the UK Office for Budget Responsibility's Brexit Analysis. [1]

The OBR's analysis suggests outcomes like the following (all quoted from that assessment) that seem to suggest some degree of negative economic impact:

* The post-Brexit trading relationship between the UK and EU, as set out in the ‘Trade and Cooperation Agreement’ (TCA) that came into effect on 1 January 2021, will reduce long-run productivity by 4 per cent relative to remaining in the EU.

* Both exports and imports will be around 15 per cent lower in the long run than if the UK had remained in the EU.

[1] https://obr.uk/forecasts-in-depth/the-economy-forecast/brexi...

With respect, argh! Lol.

That link is neither analysis nor reporting on outcomes. That's more predictions. This is the exact problem I'm talking about!

To analyze outcomes you must look at the actual data. There's a report that does so here but you can look up the raw data too if you prefer:

https://iea.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Perspectives_5...

From the summary:

"Contrary to initial concerns, Brexit has not had a major detrimental effect on UK–EU trade.

● Trade data doesn’t support the Office for Budget Responsibility’s claims that Brexit has caused significant negative impacts on the UK economy.

● Data from 2019 to 2022 indicates that the trade in both goods and services between the UK and EU hasn’t shown a discernible Brexit effect."

You can look up more recent numbers but the story hasn't changed.

I'd really like to understand the psychology of this phenomenon better. I don't mean this as any personal criticism because it's good that you're asking, but the fact that every time I bring this prediction/reality conflation up I get a rebuttal with more predictions in it is fascinating.

Also "with respect":

● The analysis you link to is exactly the same sort of analysis the OBR provides -- i.e. a synthesis of current and past data and updated projections of what that means looking ahead

● The OBR report links to detailed "Economic and fiscal outlook" (EFO) data that includes the actual data the conclusions are based on. I haven't tried to look at the linked data for many of the analyses in the OBR report, but for those I have I find data in the cited EFO documents that seems to backup the statements made. For example, Box 2.6 of the March 2022 EFO report: https://obr.uk/box/the-latest-evidence-on-the-impact-of-brex...

● I gather that the "Institute of Economic Affairs" (IEA) is a long running right wing think-tank/advocacy group -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_of_Economic_Affairs

● The director of the IEA was apparently recorded by an undercover reporter telling funders that his organization was in "the Brexit influencing game" [1]. Why should I thus trust that the IEA isn't trying to spin Brexit outcomes to their funders advantage? This applies to the government too of course, but many of those OBR/EFO reports seem to have been prepared when the Conservatives were in power.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/jul/29/rightwing-t...

I'm only citing the IEA report for the opening commentary on trade data. I know it has other stuff but that's not germane to the point.

That the IEA is right wing is neither here nor there, because the statements it makes are factual and true. If for some reason you suspect foul play you can just look up the data yourself instead of digging up irrelevant quotes (the Guardian is also very much in the Brexit influencing game, so what?)

I'll do the work for you. Here's a report from Parliament with the relevant data up to 2023. See the graph in section 3.1

https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-...

That's trade. For other economics indicators there are many sources. I like TradingEconomics.com

Thanks for linking to the parliamentary trade data! I think we both agree that's useful data on which to have a discussion.

Since you were so kind as to "do the work" for me, I'll also "do the work" for you (LOL!):

● From the text and tables in 3.1 (text from the report included below) I take it we both come to the same conclusion that post-Brexit the EU has lost ~£40 billion in export trade?

● To be clear how I'm getting that number -- NET LOSS in Exports for 2023 vs values cited for period 2017-2019: ~£20 billion to EU + ~£20 billion non EU

Is £40 billion a little or a lot? From the text below that seems to be about a 10% hit on exports.

How much is attributable to Brexit vs other factors (e.g. impact of COVID) really is the domain of forecasting and analysis, which you seem uncomfortable with. So perhaps we'll leave it there. EDIT: For readers who are interested in the performance of forecasting models, the OBR includes an analysis of the performance of their models here: https://obr.uk/box/how-are-our-brexit-trade-forecast-assumpt...

--

From the Parliamentary report "Statistics on UK trade with the EU":

> UK goods exports to the EU have not recovered to pre-Brexit levels. Goods exports to the EU exceeded £170 billion in 2017, 2018 and 2019 but have not done so in any calendar year since and were £153 billion in 2023 (see table below).

> It is worth noting that UK exports of goods to the EU were growing quite slowly before Brexit and the pandemic, being only 9% higher in 2019 than 2010 in real terms

> Goods exports to non-EU countries also remain below pre-Brexit levels. These exceeded £180 billion in 2017, 2018 and 2019 but have been below £170 billion in every calendar year since then. They were £162 billion in 2023.

--

EDITS: added some clarification re: source of export values; wording of text.

We can tell there is no impact of Brexit because UK exports fell to both EU and non-EU countries by about the same amount, probably due to COVID impact. They would need to diverge for there to have been an impact of Brexit specifically. This doesn't require forecasting to see, you can look at the graph and see that there's been no divergence.

We seem to have reached the maximum thread depth, which is probably a strong hint to us to end this discussion. We're way off topic anyhow as this thread is about the impact of current US tariffs.

But to your last comment, post-Brexit the UK is pretty significantly under-performing the rest of the G7 in terms of goods trades (prior to Brexit the UK seemed to mirror the G7 average).

https://obr.uk/box/how-are-our-brexit-trade-forecast-assumpt...

Interestingly, in terms of Services trade the UK seems to be slightly over-performing.

Sure. I think we both agree at least that the UK isn't suffering some kind of crisis, doesn't have plunging GDP etc, which is where this sub-thread started.

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