Politically, the Brexit question seems increasingly clear-cut in the United Kingdom, with most Britons believing that the exit from the European Union was a failure. Around 60% believe the decision was "a mistake"; just 10% think Brexit is going well "for now," and just 30% expect it to be positive "in the long term."

Under these circumstances, all the country's ills were attributed to Brexit: Soaring inflation, collapsing schools, lengthening hospital waiting lists, stagnant economy, and political instability. But was Brexit to blame?

On September 1, the Office for National Statistics published a major statistical revision covering 2020 and 2021, when the Covid-19 pandemic was underway. It concluded that the British economy was much stronger than initially estimated. In the fourth quarter of 2021, gross domestic product was finally up 0.6% compared with the fourth quarter of 2019 instead of down 1.2%. Suddenly, with almost two points of GDP recovering, Britain did not look so bad.

If this new calculation is correct, and the statistics for 2022 and 2023 are not entirely amended, the economy is now 1.5% above its pre-pandemic level. This is similar to France, significantly better than Germany (0%), but worse than Italy (+2.1%), Japan (+3.5%), Canada (+3.5%) or the United States (+6.1%). The British government is delighted. The "latest figures show we have bounced back better than many other G7 economies and are one of the most attractive countries in the world to invest," said Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt on September 3. Was the Brexit impact ultimately negligible?

To understand this, one needs to know why the statistics were revised in the first place. As John Springford, an economist at the Centre for European Reform think-tank, pointed out, this is a second revision. "The previous one, a year earlier, had been a downward correction of 1.7 points of GDP. So this new estimate merely cancels out this initial revision." Springford added that most other statistical institutes worldwide were also working on revising figures for the pandemic period, which could lead to further changes in international comparisons.

The statistics revision mainly concerns the services sector, especially the public sector. Amid the pandemic, estimating the evolution of those parts of the economy that suddenly closed and reopened was particularly tricky. "This has nothing to do with the impact on international trade and our economic relations with the rest of the world," stressed Jonathan Portes, an economist at the UK in a Changing Europe university research organization.

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