Brexit uncertainty has cost Britain £600m every week, Goldman Sachs says The investment bank said the country has lost nearly 2.5 per cent of its GDP

The British economy has been £600 million worse off every week since the EU referendum in June 2016, according to new research.



According to a new report published by investment banking giant Goldman Sachs , nearly 2.5 per cent has been shaved off UK GDP since the June 2016 vote.

This means that every seven days, Brexit has cost the economy nearly double what the Leave campaign promised would be spent on the NHS if the country voted out.

Leave famously wrote on the side of a big red bus that the NHS would receive an additional £350m every week once the UK departs the EU.

But the £600m figure might soon worsen if the shock of a no-deal Brexit comes to pass.

UK economy lagging behind

Goldman Sachs has argued that had UK voters opted to remain in the EU, the economy would have been in a much stronger position. Instead it has been under-performing and lagging behind other advanced economies.



Goldman’s number crunchers concluded that investment has been one of the biggest casualties of the Brexit debacle, confirming official data which has shown it in decline.

“The component-level breakdown reveals that output losses have been concentrated in investment and private consumption,” said a statement from the bank.

“The outsized impact on investment suggests that political uncertainty associated with the Brexit process may, indeed, be one of the major sources of the economic cost of Brexit,” the report said.

The report echoes previous Bank of England analysis that suggested around £40 billion per year, or £800 million per week, of income had been lost for the country as a whole since the result of the leave vote.

No deal fears

It comes as MPs remain in deadlock over Britain’s divorce terms, with a series of indicative votes due on Monday evening that aim to chart the course of the nation’s EU exit.



Goldman added that under a no-deal scenario, favoured by the most extreme Tory Brexiters, the UK will be a big loser, but its European neighbours would also suffer.

It said: “Under our ‘no-deal’ scenario, the UK suffers large output losses, in conjunction with a substantial global confidence shock marked by a sharp sterling depreciation. European countries would be most exposed to this scenario and could see output losses of around one per cent of real GDP.”

Conversely, a “status quo” Brexit transition deal would reverse part of the UK’s output under-performance and, under a remain scenario, the UK “fully recoups Brexit-related output costs and business confidence rebounds”.

Additional reporting by PA