What Has Brexit Actually Cost Britain? The Brexit Bill Itemised

September 23, 2026

In the spring of 2016 somebody painted a number on the side of a bus. Three hundred and fifty million pounds a week for the NHS. The UK Statistics Authority, whose entire job is numbers, called it misleading. The bus kept driving.

Ten years on the bus has gone. Something else has turned up in its place. It is the bill.

We took seven promises from Brexit and checked each one against what it actually cost. Every line starts with something a politician said out loud and on the record. Every cost comes from somebody whose job is counting. The total at the bottom is in the video above. You might want to be sitting down for it.

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The seven lines on the bill

1. The exact same benefits. In January 2017 David Davis promised a trade deal that would deliver "the exact same benefits as we have". Two months later he explained it was an aim. Economists at the LSE worked out that the new border checks added almost £7 billion to the nation's grocery bills. That is about £250 for every household and it bought the exact same cheese.

2. No threat to Erasmus. In January 2020 Boris Johnson told the Commons there was no threat to the Erasmus scheme. By Christmas the trade deal had arrived and Erasmus was not in it.

3. Our waters back. The deal handed a quarter of the EU's share of fish in British waters back to British boats over five and a half years. A new deal in 2025 then froze the shares until 2038. They did take back control. A quarter at a time.

4. At a minimum. The 2019 Conservative manifesto promised the replacement for EU regional funding would "at a minimum" match it. It came in about a billion pounds a year under the minimum.

5. Control of our borders. Leaving the EU also meant leaving the Dublin rules. Those let Britain ask another EU country to take responsibility for an asylum seeker who had passed through it first. The trade deal put nothing in their place.

6. The small print. Nobody promised this one. A pet passport used to be enough to take the dog to France. Now the dog needs a new animal health certificate for every single trip and they start at about £100. You also join the other queue at passport control.

7. The easiest trade deal in human history. That was Liam Fox's prediction. The Office for Budget Responsibility expects British trade to end up fifteen per cent lower than if we had stayed. History has seen easier.

There are two refunds on the bill as well. Both are things Britain was already in before it left. The total is in the video and it is not small.