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Stick on “Ode to Joy”, pop open a bottle of prosecco, curl off some jamón: welcome to Doppelgänger Britain.
This parallel universe – scoffed at by Brexiteers and yearned for by Europhiles – is the unofficial comparison point for how much Brexit has impacted the UK economy. The country the UK could have been had it remained in the European Union. It’s a world that hovers in and out of view from Brexit Britain, like one of those lenticular stickers from the Nineties. There, but not there – a vision just out of view behind every unsettling ripple in the stagnant economy.
Inflation, product scarcity, staff shortages, queues at Dover… whatever it is, the question is always “is this Brexit?” Remainers are certain it is, sore-winner Brexiteers won’t hear anything of it (though are similarly silent on their project’s promised merits). Opinion polls suggest a country filled with “Bregret”.
The doppelgänger is an attempt to work out how the UK would be faring now if it weren’t for Brexit. Referenced in the Financial Times, Economist and BBC, weighing on the shoulders of Whitehall civil servants, and pored over by European governments, the “doppelgänger model” is perhaps the most influential analysis we have of Brexit’s impact. And it doesn’t look good.
In creating a mythical Britain from comparable economies around the world – as they were before the 2016 EU referendum – this method suggests some of the bleakest pre-Brexit forecasts were right. Late last year, the model found that Brexit has reduced UK GDP by 5.5 per cent. (Since GDP growth forecasts were revised upwards last month, this has fallen to 5 per cent.) In 2018, the government’s long-term Brexit forecast suggested the deal Boris Johnson backed would make the UK 4.9 per cent worse off. The Office for Budget Responsibility found Brexit would reduce productivity by 4 per cent in the long run.
Not quite “Project Fear” – the label applied to Remainers who warned the UK would suffer an immediate recession. But nowhere near a nimble Singapore-on-Thames nor a buccaneering Global Britain either.“The model suggests the costs of Brexit are on the higher end of the forecasts made before and immediately after the referendum,” said John Springford, the economist behind the model. He is deputy director of the Centre for European Reform, a pro-European think tank, where he began as a junior research fellow in 2011 focused on what was then considered “boring stuff about the EU”.