{"id":220967,"date":"2025-10-23T19:19:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-23T19:19:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/220967\/"},"modified":"2025-10-23T19:19:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-23T19:19:10","slug":"economist-explains-how-the-brexit-buss-350m-a-week-claim-was-actually-a-total-bargain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/220967\/","title":{"rendered":"Economist explains how the Brexit bus’s\u00a0\u00a3350m a week claim was actually a total bargain"},"content":{"rendered":"

An economist has explained how the infamous Brexit bus was actually advertising the \u2018bargain of the century.\u2019<\/p>\n

One of the enduring images of the Brexit campaign was the bus which stated the UK sends the European Union \u00a3350 million a week, money which the Leave campaign claimed should be used to fund the NHS instead. <\/p>\n

Of course, after leaving the EU, this money has not been used to fund the NHS and with every passing week, month and year, Brexit has shown itself to be a economically disastrous move for the UK. <\/p>\n

Now, economist Tim Leunig has explained how the \u00a3350m figure paraded by the Brexit bus was actually a total bargain. <\/p>\n

Speaking on Thursday\u2019s edition of the Financial Times\u2019 podcast The Economics Show<\/a>, Leunig, who was a former advisor to two chancellors, was asked about Labour\u2019s shifting stance on blaming Brexit<\/a> for the UK\u2019s economic malaise. <\/p>\n

READ NEXT: Albanian PM delivers perfect response to Nigel Farage\u2019s \u2018post-Brexit delusion\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n

It has previously been estimated by the Office for Budget Responsibility that Brexit reduced productivity by 4%<\/a> compared to what it would have been had we remained in the EU. <\/p>\n

Leunig was asked whether the government is \u201cright to be talking again about the legacy of Brexit,\u201d to which he responded that he didn\u2019t think \u201canything has changed in the last year or two in terms of the legacy of Brexit.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"The Brexit bus and its infamous \u00a3350m figure became one of the enduring images of the campaign (Getty)<\/p>\n

But the London School of Economics professor continued: \u201cIf we take the OBR\u2019s number of 4% at face value, and I don\u2019t know any economist who thinks it\u2019s wildly out, then that\u2019s \u00a3109 billion a year off UK growth. That\u2019s a lot.<\/p>\n

\u201cI said earlier that nothing could move the dial by more than 0.1%. The one thing that could is reversing Brexit, and if you work it out weekly, that comes out at \u00a3850 million a week.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cI think that\u2019s the sort of number you could put on a bus, and indeed it is rather bigger than the \u00a3350 million that the Brexit campaigners used.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we take their number at face value I\u2019d say it was great value. Pay \u00a3350 million, get \u00a3850 million. That\u2019s the bargain of the century.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added: \u201cAnd that\u2019s what membership of the European Union was; economically exceptional value and the sooner we can rejoin the better.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even after all these years, the stupidity of Brexit continues to reveal itself. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An economist has explained how the infamous Brexit bus was actually advertising the \u2018bargain of the century.\u2019 One…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":220968,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[934,84,1294,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-220967","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-brexit","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-economy","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom","13":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220967","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=220967"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220967\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/220968"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=220967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=220967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=220967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}