Facts4EU finally debunks claim: “UK has lost 4% of GDP due to Brexit”
– The definitive proof it’s a lie

Since the pre-Ref year of 2015, the UK has GROWN FASTER than the EU’s Top 3 economies

Montage © Facts4EU.Org 2025

Analysis of latest IMF data, after inflation, shows UK has grown faster since Brexit than EU’s finest

For years, when Remainer-Rejoiners are presented with one fact after another showing that Brexit has been a benefit to the UK - and being unable to counter the fact because it’s true - in the end they will resort in desperation to a well-worn classic claim:

“Well anyway, the UK has lost 4% of GDP because of Brexit.”

This claim has never been true, not even remotely, and today we provide the definitive, simple, official truth to prove it.

Finally, the simple answer to shut them up

Brexit Facts4EU has often been asked by Brexiteers over the years: “What’s the best answer when Rejoiners make this claim that GDP is 4% lower than it should be and it’s because of Brexit?” Everyone we know has grown tired of hearing this false claim from Remainer-Rejoiners. It has become like a broken record.

Yesterday we were asked yet again what the best answer is and so today we are hitting this falsehood on the head once and for all.

The IMF, one of the Rejoiners' favourite institutions to quote, provides our data

We turned to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), an institution that was quoted many times before (and after) the UK’s Referendum on whether to leave the European Union. The reason they were quoted is because like all the Establishment, they did their level best to persuade the British people they would be worse off if they voted to leave.

The IMF has a database in a new structure which makes it easy to compare data across countries. One of the line items is ‘real GDP’, i.e. a country’s GDP after accounting for inflation. The latest data for EU countries goes up to 2023, so the range below is from the pre-Referendum year of 2016-2023, a period of nine years. As the data is in each country’s currency, we have converted the figure for 2015 to 100 in order to show the comparison between the UK and the EU’s Top 3 economies of Germany, France, and Italy.

In a sense, the other EU economies don't matter. It's the figures for the UK that are important. Despite all the apocalyptic claims, the UK's economy has continued to grow in real terms, instead of 'falling off a cliff', as all Remainers predicted.

Brexit Facts4EU.Org Summary

The UK’s economy has grown faster than the EU’s three finest

Real growth in GDP, 2015-2023 (latest figures available)

© Brexit Facts4EU.Org 2025 - click to enlarge
[Source: International Monetary Fund (IMF) database, accessed 29 May 2025.]

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Where did this fictitious figure of a 4% loss of GDP come from?

The first thing to say is that it came, like so many false claims by Rejoiners, from a forecast. Brexit Facts4EU publishes reports based on facts, not forecasts. Anyone can make a forecast, and almost every forecast is wrong. The best example of this currently is the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) whose forecasts are so bad they make one wonder if they could accurately forecast tomorrow will be Friday.

In the case of the “4% loss of GDP” forecast, this was one of those figures plucked from an HM Treasury report in the days when its boss was George Osborne, arch-Remainer and Chancellor of the Exchequer. They issued two reports, the second of which was published a month or so before the EU Referendum in an attempt to do maximum damage to the Leave campaign.

Naturally the BBC and all the other pro-Remain media outlets seized on this forecast gleefully and repeated it often, without ever making it sufficiently clear that it was only a forecast and it was therefore based on assumptions and – we can say with some certainty – institutional Whitehall bias.

Observations

It sometimes seems to the Brexit Facts4EU team to be bizarre that we continue to have to rebut claims from Rejoiners who are still fighting a battle they lost nine years ago. It will not be long before they start to resemble that Japanese soldier on a Pacific island who was discovered many years after the end of WWII and who thought he was still at war.

The only fly in the ointment is of course Sir Keir Starmer, who we can now see is determined to suck us back into the EU by stealth. The ‘EU Reset’ Summit last week is apparently set to become an annual event. At his first he made the most appalling concessions which will damage the fortunes of the country and which will give up sovereignty. We can only assume he intends give up more each Summit, until by the next election he has made it almost impossible for a new government to unravel what he has done.

If that is his plan, he is going to have a fight on his hands and we will be in the vanguard as usual. We could do so much more if we had more resources, but we will do what we can with what little we have.

Please, please support us today. We must have funds to carry on and to ensure our victory in 2016 is not stolen from us all.

Please help us to carry on our vital work in defence of independence, sovereignty, democracy and freedom by donating today. Thank you.

[ Sources: International Monetary Fund (IMF) database, accessed 29 May 2025. ] Politicians and journalists can contact us for details, as ever.

Brexit Facts4EU.Org, Thurs 29 May 2025

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Reader Comments 14

1. Ashley Great Britain , Thursday, May 29, 2025, 06:53:

Remainer/rejoiners still cling to the false 4% because that was the attack line before and during the referendum. They believe that the finances of it all are the things that will get the people. They can't comprehend wanting to be free and running your own country.
Things could and should have been much better for the UK but we have had remainer Government's the whole way through. Just look at how terrible Labour and starmer are.
Reform UK will have the whole establishment against them, but if they win the next election we will finally start to see what Brexit should be.
-
Looking forward to Sparkies wriggling dismissive comments.

2. John Jones , Thursday, May 29, 2025, 07:43:

To Facts4eu
Great chart - well explained.
On the reset & future resets - you write "almost impossible for a new government to unravel what he has done..."
Firstly, it's really important to understand that Successor Parliaments cannot be bound by the previous Parliament ( typically government if it has a majority). This is really important in our democracy.
Secondly - most of the reset talked about by Starmer was truly aspirational with as one wag put it - "with as much legal standing as a Big Mac but less nutritious".
To make Treaty modifications to the TCA needs unanimous Agreement of 27 states - this isn't easy in today's environment.
Yes Starmer will try every tactic in the book - but lot's of people are watching - any new government has to have its arguments marshalled as to why resets and capitulation to the EU is bad for the UK .

3. LuxuryBalloon , Thursday, May 29, 2025, 08:12:

2 John … I can’t wait for the awful Brexit deal we have now to be torn-up and for the UK government to start the whole Brexit negotiations with the EU all over again in the second half of 2029 … as promised in Reform UK’s Contract with Britain.

4. Sparky , Thursday, May 29, 2025, 08:53:

Selective use of data. The key words above are "after inflation". Germany and France did not experience the 11% inflation the UK saw in 2022 and currently have lower inflation rates than the UK.
.
The OBR has consistently stuck by their 4% impact and continue to do so. What is ignored when talking about the cliff edge not happening is the £450bn of QE issued by the BoE following the Referendum result and the drop in GDP compared to the USD and Euro in 2016. To put the BoE issuing of QE into perspective, in 2009 the BoE issued £200bn following the financial crisis and £895bn following Covid.

5. KB , Thursday, May 29, 2025, 09:54:

The forecast was not "loss of 4% GDP" per se.
It's more complicated than that. What they did was to model a UK outside the EU versus a UK within the EU, and project it forwards by 15 years. The model output was that the UK outside the EU GDP was 4% lower than the model UK within the EU.
There is no way of knowing if this is correct or not, because there are not two UKs, one in and one out, to compare.
However, we can apply some common sense and wonder if it is credible that the UK economy would outperform our peers like France and Germany to such an extent within the EU. It's pretty unlikely isn't it?

6. LuxuryBalloon , Thursday, May 29, 2025, 10:16:

Although I could not reproduce Facts4EU graph using the IMF data myself, the House of Commons Library publication of 16 May 2025 shows the UK GDP increased by 4.1% comparing Q1 2025 with Q1 2019 … broadly in agreement with the IMF figures shown by Facts4EU. But I always like to dig a bit deeper than Facts4EU normally does and in this case I was wondering why our GDP has increased. A country can increase its GDP in several ways: invest in infrastructure, invest in education, invest in research and technology, promote trade and export, reduce bureaucracy or increase the size of its labour force. I have seen a lot of evidence produced by Facts4EU regarding the last option (increase the size of the labour force through mass immigration), but very little evidence for the other options (which are my preferred ways to improve GDP). These other options are opportunities promised by Brexit… but I feel these Brexit promises have not yet been delivered. Nigel Farage believes these opportunities have failed to materialise as Boris and Frost have let us down very badly.

7. KB , Thursday, May 29, 2025, 12:33:

Sparky (4) and LB (6). You have also to take into account the borrowing and QE of EU countries. On top of those, there is also the EU Recovery Fund, which was something like £800 billion borrowed by the EU and pumped out into the EU economies. As an aside, it's not clear to me jf this Recovery Fund debt has been apportioned onto the individual nations' debts.
GDP on its own is almost meaningless. It's very easy to increase it in nominal terms by borrowing and money printing. If you can get away without currency devaluation you have then increased it in real terms too.
GDP includes so called "imputed rents". This is the rent you would have paid to live in your home if you didn't own it. It's a complete fiddle because no money has changed hands, but if you increase house prices, bingo, more GDP is calculated and money appears like magic.
It's not clear to me if other nations include imputed rents in their GDP calculations. If the methodology of computing GDP is not standardised across nations then that is another reason they are not comparable.

8. NH , Thursday, May 29, 2025, 13:23:

4. Sp
"Real GDP" excludes the effect of inflation, that's why they call it "Real". Are you saying that the OBR believe that the EU's trade wars with China and the USA would not have effected a UK that remained in the EU ?
.
6. LB
I am sure I have explained this many times before but while increasing population definitely effects it's GDP/Capita a nation can not increase it's GDP by just increasing it's population, or labour force. If that's all you needed India would have a GDP 20x the UK's GDP. In general immigrants need to produce more than they consume and their earnings need to stay in the UK. That's not been happening in the UK. Many immigrant's are on low salaries, claim benefits, are here as dependents accompanying the visa applicants or are unemployed, and all evidence shows that a significant part of their income is being sent back to their home countries. The reality in the UK is a large part of the GDP is being created by small section of the population (getting smaller since Labour became the Government) and a large section of the population are consuming most of the GDP. That's why most countries have strict controls on who they give residents visas to.
.
I am sure you will want to waffle on about this as usual, but I am not discussing something that is so simple.

9. LuxuryBalloon , Thursday, May 29, 2025, 14:08:

8 NH … I am happy as usual to leave the waffling up to you.

10. LuxuryBalloon , Thursday, May 29, 2025, 17:23:

8 NH … ok, no one else seems brave enough to call you out:
1/ ‘a nation can not increase it's GDP by just increasing it's labour force’ … shameless nonsense that any A-level economic student could point out
2/ ‘a significant part of their income is being sent back to their home countries’ … more shameless nonsense: the original income remains attributed to the GDP of the country where it is earned (not the receiving country), and remittances themselves are transfers rather than production.

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Facts4EU finally debunks claim: “UK has lost 4% of GDP due to Brexit”– The definitive proof it’s a lie

Since the pre-Ref year of 2015, the UK has GROWN FASTER than the EU’s Top 3 economies

Analysis of latest IMF data, after inflation, shows UK has grown faster since Brexit than EU’s finest

Finally, the simple answer to shut them up

The IMF, one of the Rejoiners' favourite institutions to quote, provides our data

Brexit Facts4EU.Org Summary

Any credit card user

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Where did this fictitious figure of a 4% loss of GDP come from?

Observations

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Reader Comments 14

1. Ashley Great Britain , Thursday, May 29, 2025, 06:53:

2. John Jones , Thursday, May 29, 2025, 07:43:

3. LuxuryBalloon , Thursday, May 29, 2025, 08:12:

4. Sparky , Thursday, May 29, 2025, 08:53:

5. KB , Thursday, May 29, 2025, 09:54:

6. LuxuryBalloon , Thursday, May 29, 2025, 10:16:

7. KB , Thursday, May 29, 2025, 12:33:

8. NH , Thursday, May 29, 2025, 13:23:

9. LuxuryBalloon , Thursday, May 29, 2025, 14:08:

10. LuxuryBalloon , Thursday, May 29, 2025, 17:23:

Facts4EU finally debunks claim: “UK has lost 4% of GDP due to Brexit”
– The definitive proof it’s a lie