Exposed: The demonstrable Brexit lies of Ed Davey - and the Labour Government
“Fencit” - We expose the blatant absurdity, with a ‘back garden fence’ analogy
Montage © Facts4EU.Org 2026
What politicians have said to mislead the public - and what provable nonsense this is
On countless occasions, politicians have told us how Brexit has ruined the economy. Facts4EU readers know this is not the case, from reports we have published showing the official figures from the Office for National Statistics.
This hasn’t stopped Ed Davey, many senior politicians from the Government, and the commentariat. They continue to repeat their claims of Brexit having caused a fall in the UK’s economy of 4% - 8%, depending on who is speaking. In this report from the Brexit Facts4EU team and colleagues from Stand for Our Sovereignty and The Campaign for an Independent Britain (CIBUK.Org), we expose the lies.
As these otherwise intelligent individuals don’t seem capable of understanding the basic facts, this report wholly negates their claims using an illuminating analogy of someone who puts up a fence in their back garden. We further highlight the absurdity of their falsehoods, based on the very latest, up-to-date figures on the UK economy from the official sources.
A small sample of what Ed Davey and others want you to swallow
“That deal – championed, don’t forget, by Nigel Farage – is estimated to have cost us between 6% and 8% of our GDP.”
- Ed Davey, Leader, LibDems, addressing British Chamber of Commerce, 25 Jun 2026
Various members of the Government have been peddling this for years
“The 2020 Brexit deal has caused long-term economic damage... our productivity and GDP is 4% lower today than it would have been had we remained in the European Union.”
- Rachel Reeves, then Chancellor, 15 Oct 2025 at the IMF’s annual meeting
Doubling down this year she stated:
“But Brexit did deep damage. Recent independent studies indicate its GDP impacts could be as much as 8%.”
- Rachel Reeves, then Chancellor, Mais lecture, 17 Mar 2026
Patently false, but some of the media happily regurgitate the lies
“The Chancellor says that Brexit has cost 8% of UK GDP and, at last, it’s time to realign with the EU.”
“Rachel Reeves… cited independent studies claiming that 8% was the cost of the 2016 referendum… equivalent last year to £224bn, or about £4.3bn a week.”
- The Observer/(Guardian) editorial view, 22 Mar 2026
The above quotes are only a small, representative selection. The various numbers they use are immaterial. They are all demonstrably wrong, as the following chart proves.
The ‘In-Your-Face’ reality for Mr Davey, Mr Burnham, and other Rejoiners
Real growth in GDP since the EU Referendum in 2016
© Brexit Facts4EU.Org 2026 - click to enlarge
[Sources: These figures use the latest official data, excluding inflation, from the UK’s Office for National Statistics and the EU Commission’s Eurostat. As such, these are the only figures which should be used by politicians who want to tell the truth.]
Rt Hon Lord Redwood D.Phil FCSI, former Single Market Minister and former Secretary of State
commented exclusively to Brexit Facts4EU
“Thank heavens for some facts from Facts4EU. The politicians who want the UK in the EU have always based their case on false forecasts, unrealistic promises of economic success if we are in, and predictions of disaster if we are out.
“The truth of our long membership was we grew more slowly. It got progressively worse as the EU bills surged and the rules and laws multiplied.
“Before we joined, we were promised more exports and faster growth. Instead with a 1970s Labour government overspending we got high inflation, a wave of industrial closures, and a trip to the IMF for a bail-out.
“In the 1980s we were promised a "golden scenario" of fast growth and low inflation from joining the EU's currency scheme. Instead we got runaway inflation followed by a big recession. Before we voted to leave the EU they told us house prices and shares would slump, we would go into recession, and unemployment go up. The opposite of all these happened.
“Now they tell us we lost 4% or 8% of GDP by leaving, which the official figures show did not happen!”
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“Fencit” – Here’s how this translates into everyday life
Imagine you want a conservatory, but first you erect a fence to stop your neighbours' guests wandering from their garden across your lawn and making themselves at home. The neighbours object, but it is your property.
Local estate agents confirm your house value has surged by 14% in real terms over the last decade.
However, your mortgage valuer's figure is for an unbelievable 4% less than you paid for it, saying: "We’re valuing it based on a computer model of what it might be worth in 2031."
You try a second lender. Their surveyor downrates you by an incredible 8% off your purchase price using a bizarre methodology:
"We have calculated your house's value by comparing it with the potential future value of 60% of an American mansion, 11% of an Estonian eco-house, and 10% of a Greek taverna.
"This is because you looked at your garden and decided to 'Fencit'..."
The moral of the story: Just as this person could sell their house for around 14% more than they paid for it in 2026, so the UK economy has grown by the same amount – regardless of any invented numbers from rogue valuers.
Where do the politicians’ wild claims come from?
Rachel Reeves’ 4% fall in GDP claim comes from a 15-year forecast cobbled together by George Osborne’s Treasury before the 2016 Referendum, designed to scare voters into voting Remain. No forecasts even survive 12 months, let alone 15 years, and so it has proved in this case.
Furthermore, they didn’t dare predict a fall in GDP, only saying that in 15 years from then (2031) it would be 4% lower than if we’d remained in the EU. And another forecast from the OBR didn’t even refer to GDP, only to productivity.
Ed Davey’s claim is based on yet another discredited forecast, this time by a few academics, and it was not even peer-reviewed. To arrive at its conclusions, this ‘NBER working paper’ uses different countries for its comparisons. It would be hard to pick a more bizarre list.
The normal thing would be to compare the UK with similar economies. None on the list is remotely comparable with the UK with the possible exception of Italy. France and Germany are not mentioned.
A reminder of the official GDP real growth since the Referendum
(Sources: ONS and Eurostat, extracted 11 Oct 2026) © Brexit Facts4EU.Org 2026 - click to enlarge
Regardless of the absurdity, the claims using artificial ‘forecasts’ have been relentless
The Government's favourite think-tank
“Recent evidence suggests the economic cost of Brexit may be approaching twice the 4% impact [i.e. 8% - Ed.] assumed by the OBR.”
- The Resolution Foundation, 28 Mar 2026. It’s ex-CEO is Torsten Bell MP, now Pensions Minister and Treasury lead on economic policy
This disinformation has even crossed the Channel
“…Brexit, which has seen an 8% drop in GDP since leaving.
“Brexit was the biggest lie of the last 30 years.”
- President Emmanuel Macron, addressing the young people at Complutense University of Madrid, during a state visit to Spain, 29 Sept 2026
It is impossible to see this as anything other than foreign interference in the UK's political life. Who needs the Russians when we have President Macron on our doorstep?
The Rt Hon the Lord Redwood D.Phil FCSI gave us his final comments
“Those who keep repeating we lost GDP by leaving the EU cannot even agree how much we lost. They do not just draw on old forecasts which were wrong but they even misrepresent what the old forecasts said would happen.
“The OBR 4% loss forecast never said our GDP would go down 4% after the vote or on departure. They said we might get 0.25% less productivity growth a year for 15 years, adding up to 4% by 2031 or 2035. Latest productivity figures do not show this happening.
“The 6% or 8% forecasts are also forecasts of slower growth, not of actual falls. They are based on comparing us with the US and a few other faster growing economies.
“It is true we are not growing as fast as the US but nor were we in the EU nor were the other main EU economies. This comparison is a good case for leaving the EU as EU rules and taxes prevented us matching the US faster growth.
”So come off it. Apologise for so distorting these forecasts. Admit the ideas that we have lost 4% or 6% or 8% were all made up. Facts4EU’s chart shows just how wrong you are.”
Observations
Counting the ghosts on a spreadsheet
These politicians are behaving exactly like those rogue mortgage surveyors in our analogy. They are telling you that your house has lost value, not by looking at what you could realistically sell it for, nor by reviewing other houses in the neighbourhood of similar size that have recently been sold, but by comparing your home to an imaginary, stitched-together, economists’ fictional house that does not even exist.
The "£90 billion black hole" regularly repeated on the floor of the House of Commons is not present in any Treasury bank account. It can only be found in forecasting studies like an academics’ working paper, which explicitly constructed a very strange and synthetic 'doppelgänger UK'.
Brexit Britain did not shrink. Our 13.8% growth has comfortably outpaced France (12.8%), and left the Eurozone’s largest industrial powerhouse, Germany, trailing far behind at 7.8% - over the exact same 10-year window. If we'd had governments that had taken full advantage of Brexit freedoms, we believe the economy would have grown even more strongly. However, outperforming the EU's Top 3 is a creditable result.
The idea a non-Brexit UK would have grown by an astonishing 8% more is ludicrous - and for the birds.
It’s now time for these politicians to come clean, apologise, and tell the truth to the public.
And finally, for those who were curious about the filename for this report ("lying_ayes"), this relates to the voting system in the Commons of 'Ayes' and 'Noes', and the Eagles song "Lying eyes"....
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[ Sources: Office for National Statistics | EU Commission Eurostat | Hansard | media interviews ] Politicians and journalists can contact us for details, as ever.
Brexit Facts4EU.Org, Thurs 15 Oct 2026
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