Ten years on, the economic impact of Brexit is becoming increasingly clear.

Shortly after the UK leaves the EU in 2020, a Bristol-based company called Eskimo has started selling a new high-fashion and energy-efficient electric radiator based on new technology developed by academics in the city.

They plan to send them to Europe using the Channel Tunnel.

It was a timely product given to Europe’s green ambitions, and with the flow of orders, the Birmingham factory was kept busy.

The boss, Phil Ward, tells me that the startup continues to grow, but in his view, it could be much more without what he calls the “Long Brexit effect”: in 2020, 40% of exports go to the EU, and in 2025 it will be only 5%.

A post-Brexit deal with the EU by then-prime minister Boris Johnson guaranteed zero tariffs on goods exported to the EU by December 2020, but Ward said despite this, red tape and paperwork not directly linked to tariffs was enough to create delays, costs and inconvenience for future customers.

Eskimo was able to ship some goods to agents in France, but stopped selling directly to European consumers. It was planned to expand to Germany.

And as Eskimo found out when trying to export towel rails to Australia and New Zealand, both countries comply with international safety standards heavily influenced by the EU’s CE mark.

This is important because one theoretical benefit of Brexit would be to allow UK regulators to avoid EU safety regulations and adopt a more innovation-friendly and less regulatory approach to high-tech innovation.

The Eskimo Experience is one example of a broader trend reflected in export figures. The UK Trade Policy Observatory at the University of Sussex calculates a rapid 26% drop in exports of various types to the UK by 2023, while a new study using more detailed five-year trade data from Aston University Business School includes a 53.8% drop in exports and a 31.5% drop in exports.

These “types of trade” figures fall on the number of products sent to different EU countries.

A decade ago, many economists argued that the UK would sustain long-term economic damage from leaving the EU, and many believe the damage has already arrived.

But to make that call you have to compare what happened and what might have happened had it not been for Brexit, and doing that is a matter of methodological and statistical judgement.

And that judgment must take into account whether the period since Brexit has been a period of significant global flows. In the year The outbreak in the spring of 2020, the war in Ukraine that began two years later, and, more recently, the energy price shock caused by the Iran conflict are all to blame.

So, too, is the question of whether a Brexit-free UK will continue to catch up to Silicon Valley’s tech boom in recent years.

Economists doing the calculations say a clear consensus is the cause of the global turmoil when assessing the impact of Brexit. Others question their methods and the extent of Brexit’s impact.

In the year Some of the most pessimistic predictions of 2016, including that the UK could face a Great Depression, turned out to be overly pessimistic. Whatever the economic crisis, the rapid recession was no accident.

But those who believe the UK has suffered long-term economic damage from leaving the EU say the attack is not too deep.