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John Springford at the Centre for European Reform, who has been tracking its increasingly dire impact on the UK economy, released his latest update this week.Based on the performance of similar countries before and after the event, he calculated that the UK’s economy was 5.5 per cent smaller in the second quarter of the year than it otherwise would have been. In real money, economic output was £33bn lower and tax revenues were £12bn lower.

A particularly stark report on the cost of Brexit was published on Wednesday by the Centre for European Reform (CER) think-tank. CER deputy director John Springford’s latest report on the impact of leaving the EU on the UK economy estimates that Brexit had, by the second quarter of 2022, reduced the country’s gross domestic product by 5.5 per cent. That is a very big amount indeed.

This week’s chart comes from the latest assessment of the effects of Brexit (up until June 2022) by John Springford at the Centre for European Reform think-tank. The headline number is a 5.5 per cent (£33bn) negative hit to GDP in the second quarter of 2022, when compared with remaining in the EU single market.

Camino Mortera, of the Centre for European Reform, a research institution, said the Spanish government’s attempts to interfere in the composition of the judiciary had worrying overtones of events in Poland and Hungary.Warsaw and Budapest have muzzled the independent judiciary in moves which have concerned the European Commission and civil rights groups.“Given what is happening with Poland and Hungary, just a mere suspicion that a government is trying to intervene in any way in the composition of a court through emergency legislation raises suspicions,” she told VOA.

The BCC’s call for action from the government came as research from the Centre for European Reform (CER) thinktank claimed Brexit had shaved 5.5% off GDP and cost £40bn in tax revenues.In a report, the CER’s John Springford compares Britain’s performance since Brexit with a basket of similar economies.

So now we know. Brexit is proving even worse for the UK economy than the official forecast of a 4 per cent hit to GDP over 15 years. It’s already reached 5.5 per cent, according to a study by the Centre for European Reform (CER) think-tank....The CER calculates that Brexit is costing the government £40bn a year in lost revenue, which on ministers’ own figures would allow them to give all public sector workers an inflation-linked pay rise instead of a real-terms cut and still have £12bn to spare. The think tank also cites a very clear Brexit effect on business investment, which hits productivity and therefore the politicians’ holy grail of growth.

The Centre for European Reform said that slower growth is also weighing on the Treasury’s revenue and that the tax increases announced in the autumn fiscal statement wouldn’t be necessary if the UK were still in the European Union’s common market.

The Centre for European Reform’s latest assessment, to be published shortly, which compares the UK’s performance with a “doppelganger” UK of similar countries but unaffected by Brexit, is expected to report significant negative effects on both exports and business investment.