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Tufts University asked an academic what the financial results were for the UK: "The British GDP has been reduced by 6–8%, business investment has been reduced

Tufts University asked an academic what the financial results were for the UK: "The British GDP has been reduced by 6–8%, business investment has been reduced by 12%, and trade volume has been reduced by 15%, compared to what it could have been if the U.K. had remained in the EU." https://now.tufts.edu/2026/06/08/10-years-after-brexit-vote-are-uk-residents-seeing-benefit https://now.tufts.edu/2026/06/08/10-years-after-brexit-vote-...

Insanity 4mo ago
Which is pretty much aligned with what more level-headed people predicted would happen, if my memory is correct. There was a strong push for UK to leave EU, but it was more based on emotion than rational. Of course the 'right' used the narrative of prosperity to get votes, but it never really made sense economically to leave the strong economic power of the EU and try to be independent again. The UK is not the empire it was once, they need ties with mainland Europe, their closest trading partners, to be economically viable. So this doesn't entirely come as a surprise to me.
- dijksterhuis 4mo ago
  Your username is weirdly on point for discussion of the topic at hand i guess xD
- bpye 4mo ago
  > Which is pretty much aligned with what more level-headed people predicted would happen, if my memory is correct. Of course this was painted as "project fear", and Michael Gove famously said that people had had enough of experts.
- mrguyorama 4mo ago
  >Of course the 'right' used the narrative of prosperity to get votes They used lies. Literal fabrications out of whole cloth. They said that the UK was spending hundreds of millions of pounds on the EU, and if they pulled out they could use that money on like the NHS or something. Lies.
gadders 4mo ago
The first time in history people have been able to accurately predict a counter-factual. Of course, any economic gains weren't guaranteed and were predicated on competent national government and we saw what happened there. However, net-net, I'd rather have one shite layer of government, rather than two.
- bonzini 4mo ago
  > However, net-net, I'd rather have one shite layer of government, rather than two. To make a parallel that might work for California or NY. In Europe however there is no single country that is so much better than the others at making money, in the same way as those two. Even countries that didn't enter the EU (Switzerland, Norway) accepted most of the EU regulations because they need some of them. The UK in that respect already had the sweetest deal of all EU members; and, unlike Switzerland or Norway, actually had a say on the regulations that it had to follow. Plus, they had and have a messy situation due to (non-EU-related and therefore unaffected by Brexit) agreements that the border with Ireland cannot be a customs union, so the only thing a competent national government could do was to tell people they had been duped and promised something impossible. The result would have been a Switzerland- or Norway-like non-membership, with small benefits and less power in the EU.
elzbardico 4mo ago
[flagged]
- gambiting 4mo ago
  The only stupid thing about sanctions on Russia is that they aren't harsh enough.
  - Beijinger 4mo ago
    I 100% agree. They need to be much harsher and will lead to a regime change soon. But not in Russia, but in Germany (AfD), UK (Farage) and France (LePen), as predicted by Emmanuell Todd. ;-)
    - gambiting 4mo ago
      ...how can you wish for such a thing?
      - elzbardico 4mo ago
        [flagged]
        gambiting 4mo ago
        Well, I hope they pay you well to come online and write this nonsense. If you're writing this out of your own free will without compensation then that's just sad.
  - elzbardico 4mo ago
    [flagged]
    - cindyllm 4mo ago
      [dead]
    - 4mo ago
calvinmorrison 4mo ago
[flagged]
- gspr 4mo ago
  [flagged]
  - tomhow 4mo ago
    Please don't ever comment like this on HN. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. This is only a site where anyone wants to participate because others make the effort to do better than this. Please take a moment to read the guidelines and observe them in future. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - gspr 4mo ago
      I agree, and I apologize. My emotions overflowed. That being said – and with no reduction in my apology – I'm very glad to see that the comment my anger was directed at (a wild political statement without anything backing it up or anything contributing to further discussion) was also reprimanded. This kind of "contribution" to the discourse is a major threat to free societies, and should be called out (calling the author a moron is, of course, not the best way of doing that).
      - tomhow 4mo ago
        Thanks for the contrition. We hadn't reprimanded that user as yet, not because we regard it as a good comment (we certainly don't), but because we hadn't gotten to it. That's almost always the reason why we may reprimand one comment but not another bad one in a subthread. We're often not reading through subthreads in order of the discussion; we have different views of comments we look at to help us find the worst ones. Often, we get to other comments later, or if not, users who comment like that repeatedly will be reprimanded at another time, and eventually banned if they keep it up. > This kind of "contribution" to the discourse is a major threat to free societies I'd appeal to you to be less alarmist about comments posted on a niche tech-focused text-only discussion board. People can have strongly opposing opinions and even unhealthy ways of expressing political positions without necesssarily being "a major threat to free societies".
onlyrealcuzzo 4mo ago
> "The British GDP has been reduced by 6–8%, business investment has been reduced by 12%, and trade volume has been reduced by 15%, compared to what it could have been if the U.K. had remained in the EU." The average person doesn't care about any of that. If ~99% of those gains go to ~0.1% of people, the average person does not care. What they do care about is, did MY expenses go up higher than MY wages. Did MY opportunities get better or worse... In the UK example, the result is potentially even worse - but I would guess the response to COVID & global wars are likely to have a bigger impact on that than Brexit.
marcusverus 4mo ago
Ah yes, economists are famously capable of accurately projecting a decade in the future.

Insanity 4mo ago

Which is pretty much aligned with what more level-headed people predicted would happen, if my memory is correct. There was a strong push for UK to leave EU, but it was more based on emotion than rational. Of course the 'right' used the narrative of prosperity to get votes, but it never really made sense economically to leave the strong economic power of the EU and try to be independent again. The UK is not the empire it was once, they need ties with mainland Europe, their closest trading partners, to be economically viable. So this doesn't entirely come as a surprise to me.

dijksterhuis 4mo ago
Your username is weirdly on point for discussion of the topic at hand i guess xD
bpye 4mo ago
> Which is pretty much aligned with what more level-headed people predicted would happen, if my memory is correct. Of course this was painted as "project fear", and Michael Gove famously said that people had had enough of experts.
mrguyorama 4mo ago
>Of course the 'right' used the narrative of prosperity to get votes They used lies. Literal fabrications out of whole cloth. They said that the UK was spending hundreds of millions of pounds on the EU, and if they pulled out they could use that money on like the NHS or something. Lies.

gadders 4mo ago

The first time in history people have been able to accurately predict a counter-factual. Of course, any economic gains weren't guaranteed and were predicated on competent national government and we saw what happened there. However, net-net, I'd rather have one shite layer of government, rather than two.

bonzini 4mo ago
> However, net-net, I'd rather have one shite layer of government, rather than two. To make a parallel that might work for California or NY. In Europe however there is no single country that is so much better than the others at making money, in the same way as those two. Even countries that didn't enter the EU (Switzerland, Norway) accepted most of the EU regulations because they need some of them. The UK in that respect already had the sweetest deal of all EU members; and, unlike Switzerland or Norway, actually had a say on the regulations that it had to follow. Plus, they had and have a messy situation due to (non-EU-related and therefore unaffected by Brexit) agreements that the border with Ireland cannot be a customs union, so the only thing a competent national government could do was to tell people they had been duped and promised something impossible. The result would have been a Switzerland- or Norway-like non-membership, with small benefits and less power in the EU.

elzbardico 4mo ago

[flagged]

gambiting 4mo ago
The only stupid thing about sanctions on Russia is that they aren't harsh enough.
- Beijinger 4mo ago
  I 100% agree. They need to be much harsher and will lead to a regime change soon. But not in Russia, but in Germany (AfD), UK (Farage) and France (LePen), as predicted by Emmanuell Todd. ;-)
  - gambiting 4mo ago
    ...how can you wish for such a thing?
    - elzbardico 4mo ago
      [flagged]
      - gambiting 4mo ago
        Well, I hope they pay you well to come online and write this nonsense. If you're writing this out of your own free will without compensation then that's just sad.
- elzbardico 4mo ago
  [flagged]
  - cindyllm 4mo ago
    [dead]
  - 4mo ago

calvinmorrison 4mo ago

[flagged]

gspr 4mo ago
[flagged]
- tomhow 4mo ago
  Please don't ever comment like this on HN. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. This is only a site where anyone wants to participate because others make the effort to do better than this. Please take a moment to read the guidelines and observe them in future. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - gspr 4mo ago
    I agree, and I apologize. My emotions overflowed. That being said – and with no reduction in my apology – I'm very glad to see that the comment my anger was directed at (a wild political statement without anything backing it up or anything contributing to further discussion) was also reprimanded. This kind of "contribution" to the discourse is a major threat to free societies, and should be called out (calling the author a moron is, of course, not the best way of doing that).
    - tomhow 4mo ago
      Thanks for the contrition. We hadn't reprimanded that user as yet, not because we regard it as a good comment (we certainly don't), but because we hadn't gotten to it. That's almost always the reason why we may reprimand one comment but not another bad one in a subthread. We're often not reading through subthreads in order of the discussion; we have different views of comments we look at to help us find the worst ones. Often, we get to other comments later, or if not, users who comment like that repeatedly will be reprimanded at another time, and eventually banned if they keep it up. > This kind of "contribution" to the discourse is a major threat to free societies I'd appeal to you to be less alarmist about comments posted on a niche tech-focused text-only discussion board. People can have strongly opposing opinions and even unhealthy ways of expressing political positions without necesssarily being "a major threat to free societies".

onlyrealcuzzo 4mo ago

> "The British GDP has been reduced by 6–8%, business investment has been reduced by 12%, and trade volume has been reduced by 15%, compared to what it could have been if the U.K. had remained in the EU." The average person doesn't care about any of that. If ~99% of those gains go to ~0.1% of people, the average person does not care. What they do care about is, did MY expenses go up higher than MY wages. Did MY opportunities get better or worse... In the UK example, the result is potentially even worse - but I would guess the response to COVID & global wars are likely to have a bigger impact on that than Brexit.

marcusverus 4mo ago

Ah yes, economists are famously capable of accurately projecting a decade in the future.