By Graham Vanbergen: You could sum up Brexit with a few words from Andrew Rawnsley’s piece in The Guardian recently that lamented: “Brexiters in denial can’t admit to themselves that a project founded in delusion, marinated in fantasy, riddled with contradictions and marketed with mendacities was never going to “work”.”

But for the swivel-eyed Brextremists – all of that stuff is nonsense coming from lefty latte liberals and the tofu-eating wokerati. But then again, ask an economist, any economist – and not one will stand up and say Brexit was a success in any part of the economy, let alone using wider basic metrics against peer nations.

The Independent reports that the – “Government is accused of ‘failure and broken promises’, as exports set to slump. The UK will hit the £ 1 trillion mark in exports … 15 years later than it would have done if Brexit had not happened.”

The Financial Times reports that – “A leading Ikea executive on Thursday said Brexit had caused “chaos”, as a senior UK minister admitted in Davos that Britain’s departure from the EU had brought “significant challenges”.

The Telegraph – a leading mouthpiece of Brexit has finally admitted that – “Many voters said they feel lied to and things have got worse since the vote” and that “a third of Conservative voters believe Brexit has created more problems than it has solved.”

The Yorkshire post – a newspaper that Rishi Sunak might read in his own constituency is not mincing its words when it says – “Hold Tories to account over vast economic failure of Brexit.”

But let’s not fret over our clearly biased mainstream media. How about some of the nation’s biggest economic analysts and forecasters? The Office for Budget Responsibility, a public body funded by the UK Treasury, that the UK government established to provide independent economic forecasts and independent analysis of the public finances. Its current analysis, as at January 2023 is that Brexit is an economic disaster. “Brexit will reduce long-run productivity by 4 per cent relative to remaining in the EU. This largely reflects our view that the increase in non-tariff barriers on UK-EU trade acts as an additional impediment to the exploitation of comparative advantage.” ‘Long-run productivity’ more or less means all productivity.

The ONS functions as the executive office of the National Statistician, who is also the UK Statistics Authority’s Chief Executive and principal statistical adviser to the UK’s National Statistics Institute. They say … the same. “Disruptions to international trade caused by the end of the Brexit transition period saw the value of UK trade with the EU contract sharply.”

Two years ago, The Economist reported that it was evident Brexit was already doing substantial damage. “Exports of goods to the European Union fell by 40% while imports dropped by almost 30%. Although much of that fall represents the unwinding of prior stockpiling and pandemic-related effects, there are clues in the data that suggest a substantial proportion reflects the new post-Brexit reality.” Two years later, The Economist has put it that – “the evidence so far shows that Brexit has hurt. Brexit had hit GDP by as much as 6% and has dragged down investment by 11%.” In addition, “Brexit had depressed Britain’s trade in goods by 7% by the second quarter of 2022.”

Researchers from the Centre for Economic Performance, another think-tank, have analysed food products that were more or less likely to come from the EU and concluded that Brexit increased average food prices in Britain by around 3% annually since 2020.

Then there’s our new friend to the team Aidan Link, or ChatGBT as he/she/it is really known – the artificial intelligence system that collates billions of bits of data (excluding conspiracy theory websites and others like the Daily Mail). It concludes after absorbing millions of bytes of data that:

“In conclusion, the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the European Union has been marked by failure, with the process being plagued by political infighting, economic uncertainty, and a lack of clear direction from the government. The failure of Brexit has also led to negative impacts on the UK economy and public opinion.”

You can’t be clearer than that can you?

For my part, I’ll be impartial and philosophically say this. Whether you voted for Brexit or not – one thing is undeniable. This government has spent years punching itself in the face dementedly over how to get Brexit done whilst not really knowing how to actually make it work. In the meantime, the government has wasted years of effort, and countless £billions of much-need taxpayers’ cash without really looking at the dreadful shortage of affordable housing, how to fix our chronic and rapidly collapsing elderly social care system or indeed even the one thing that is close to Tory mindsets – how to improve our stagnant economy.

After all the division, fighting, finger-pointing and subsequent failure – Brexit quite simply wasn’t worth it, was it?