Debunking Benefit 1: No, We Didn’t Get the Same Trade Deals "For Free"
When “we kept what we already had” becomes a triumph, you know the bar has been dug into the earth’s crust.
There’s some sort of saying that a thousand-mile journey starts with a single step (or something along those lines - I don’t give motivational posters much attention unless they involve cats). This particular journey through 75 Brexit “Benefits” as laid out in the book by Gully Foyle starts with something a little heavier than a step - it starts with a claim delivered with so much confidence and so cleanly and beautifully uncomplicated, that you can almost admire the craftsmanship of its wrongness.
The very first chapter in the book we’ll be dissecting over the next 75 posts starts by explaining to all us “remoaners” that the UK left the EU with “fundamentally the same deals with non-EU countries” as it had when it previously enjoyed the benefits of being a member of the bloc - the only difference now being that we get them for “free.”
It’s a great argument this one, I have to say - it feels like it’s been designed from the ground up to be loudly stated over a pub table at 11 pm over a long flat and slightly warm pint of ale. It’s straightforward, triumphant and completely calibrated to make the person on the receiving end feel just a bit too exhausted to argue.
“There are few as easily demonstrable benefits,” he writes, “as getting the same thing you used to pay for, but now getting it for free.1”
Now, I have to say, that I do in all fairness see the appeal of this argument - if Brexit had truly delivered all the same trade access at zero cost to us in the UK, it would indeed be quite the remarkable feat - except, as with almost all things that inhabit Brexitland, the story goes just a little bit wobbly the moment you try to match it up with any sort of evidence.
In the interest of fairness, I’ll start with the bit that’s (sort-of-kind-of) true - the UK Government did, rather admirably, roll over the majority of existing EU free trade agreements2, and many of our post-Brexit agreements are near identical trade copies of the ones we had when we were inside the EU tent as members. It necessitated a veritable army of civil service labour and enough late-night legal drafting to power a medium-sized village, so I would not want the efforts of those involved to be nullified.
But - and it is a big but - continuity in and of itself is not a benefit. Continuity is what you try to achieve when disaster is your alternative - what we managed to do through maintaining continuity was the equivalent of publishing a business continuity plan that keeps you hobbling on while half your stock caught fire because Jeremy was smoking around the chemicals again3.
In 75 Brexit Benefits though, Foyle presents these trade rollovers as proof of increased freedom and national competence being at play - all while Economists tend to classify the same situation under the more technical term of “not completely screwing everything into the ground by not having a plan in place.4”
The fact that the UK managed to replicate so many agreements is an accomplishment, absolutely - but it is an accomplishment in what boils down to damage limitation and risk mitigation, not national renewal or a great step forward of any sort.
The bit about Chapter 1 of Foyle’s book that really had my left eyelid twitching though was his insistence that these replicated deals are now gratis. Free. Cost us nothing. Niks.
He frames the conversation he’s having with his readers as though the UK’s entire net contribution5 to the EU budget was - unbeknownst to us - a subscription fee for access to trade deals with South Korea and Chile, when in reality the budget funded:
The functioning of the single market.
Huge regional investment (including, pretty crucially, in parts of the UK that now miss it dearly).
Agricultural subsidies (which have had a pretty big impact on farmers6)
Regulatory Agencies
Collective diplomatic power
The negotiating leverage that got those pretty damned good deals in the first place.
By treating EU contributions as a “membership fee for external FTAs”, Foyle is basically doing the same thing as treating his whole mobile bill as the payment for the calculator app.
And, pretty importantly, if we were looking at a proper counterfactual, we wouldn’t be “the UK inside the EU paying for the same FTAS”, it would be “What would our trade performance have looked like today had we stayed inside the Single Market and still maintained the benefits of those deails.”
The answer to that?
According to the OBR7, NBER8 and LSE’s Centre for Economic Performance9 is better. Much, much, better - with the findings showing that Brexit has reduced our long-run trade intensity by around 15%, reduced small business exports by 30% and our productivity around 4% when compared to us staying in the Single Market. Looking more locally, the GLA (Greater London Authority) found that there was a drop of nearly £9,500 in income for London households since leaving the European Union - a number certainly not to be sniffed at10.
With this performance squarely in focus, it means that even with the admirable rollovers, the UK has ended up with a smaller pie, fewer slices and a much worse oven.
And the most inconvenient point for Foyle’s opening salvo? The trade we rolled over did not, unfortunately, increase - not one bit - with evidence from the OBR, and numerous other econometrics showing that:
UK exports have consistently underperformed relative to other similar economies11.
Exports to the EU have significantly fallen relative to a remain-counterfactual baseline12.
Exports to non-EU partners have not increased in any real reliable way attributable to the rollover deals13.
Imports from some non-EU countries have increased, however, this does not mean that the UK has become richer or more competitive.
In simpler terms - we kept the scaffolding (in the form of the rollover agreements), but the building (our economy) still shrank.
The second-to-last claim that Foyle makes is related to quotas - and specifically that by splitting the historical tariff-rate quotas away from the EU, partner countries got a “great win.”
This makes it sound a little bit as though the United Kingdom, newly unshackled and amorous for trade, strode into the global marketplace and started handing out generous concessions like a Union Jack bedecked, benevolent Santa Claus.
But what actually happened was somewhat less… salubrious - because the quota-splitting that is mentioned was a WTO-mandated administrative process. It was housekeeping that was designed to prevent global trade from grinding to a halt.
The EU got its share of quotas and the UK got its share. There really was no dancing in the streets in the form of a geopolitical win - there was just an adjustment on a spreadsheet.
More importantly though, the EU remains a market of over 450 million people and its negotiating leverage is, and will always be, significantly more powerful than ours - and that fact just won’t change just because the UK divvied up lamb quotas with New Zealand.
The final Foyle flourish of the chapter is in the form of a celebration of that all-too familiar concept - sovereignty14. Specifically, trade sovereignty.
And yes, giving credit where it’s due, we can now indeed negotiate whichever trade deal strikes our fancy whenever the hell we want - but, that autonomy we gained unfortunately does not translate into any sort of real advantage.
While in the EU, the UK was able to help shape the trade policy for half a billion people - outside of it, we speak for 67 million people. Completely admirable people, the 67 million of them - but fewer nonetheless.
The consensus on this subject is pretty unanimous on one thing - power doesn’t come from standing alone, it comes from standing behind a larger market with more humans actually wanting to trade.
And so what remains of Foyle’s “clear, easily demonstrable benefit” of Brexit?
This:
The UK managed to copy-paste several dozen agreements it already had (yay for baseline competence!)
We managed to avoid a cliff edge disaster (again, this is something worth celebrating when we have a look at the performance we’ve seen over the past fifteen years of governments in the UK).
It did not in any meaningful way improve our situation.
Trade performance worsened anyway.
The “free” agreement misunderstands what EU membership actually paid for.
None of this would have been in any way necessary if we had remained a member of the EU (or just the single market).
The problem with framing continuity in and of itself as a benefit is that Brexit would have delivered 68 benefits before breakfast was even digested - but if continuity is recognised as emergency stabilisation, i.e. a way of keeping the roof on after you’ve knocked out the foundations, then the picture starts looking a bit… different.
Chapter one of Foyle’s project works really hard to sell us the idea that keeping what you already had anyway is a the same thing as gaining something new, but being able to salvage something that was in a crash is not in any way or form victory, and paperwork is in no way prosperity or progress.
And with that, our first debunk is done.
Only 74 to go.
Please. Send strength.
This was the first of what will be seventy-five articles, each one guaranteed to take far longer to write than it took the original claim to be typed. If you’d like to support me in pushing through Brandolini’s law with only mild whimpering, a paid subscription is always appreciated, though never expected.
And if you’d like to support in the form of a one off donation, this would also be greatly welcomed.
If neither of those are possible right now, a share is just as gratefully received.
Foyle, Gully. 75 Brexit Benefits: Tangible Benefits from the UK Having Left the European Union (p. 32) - Kindle Edition.
for, D. (2022). UK trade agreements in effect. [online] GOV.UK. Available at: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/uk-trade-agreements-in-effect [Accessed 9 Dec. 2025].
Yes, there is a story there. No, it is for another time.
De Lyon, J., Dhingra, S., Hale, S. and Smith, J. (2021). Trading places Brexit and the path to longer-term improvements in living standards. [online] Available at: https://economy2030.resolutionfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Trading-places-report.pdf.
Ons.gov.uk. (2019). The UK contribution to the EU budget. [online] Available at: https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/governmentpublicsectorandtaxes/publicsectorfinance/articles/theukcontributiontotheeubudget/2017-10-31 [Accessed 9 Dec. 2025].
Farmers Weekly. (2023). Analysis: 7 years after Brexit, farmers count the cost - Farmers Weekly. [online] Available at: https://www.fwi.co.uk/news/eu-referendum/analysis-7-years-after-brexit-farmers-count-the-cost [Accessed 9 Dec. 2025].
Office for Budget Responsibility. (2022). The latest evidence on the impact of Brexit on UK trade - Office for Budget Responsibility. [online] Available at: https://obr.uk/box/the-latest-evidence-on-the-impact-of-brexit-on-uk-trade/ [Accessed 9 Dec. 2025].
Bloom, N., Bunn, P., Mizen, P., Pawel Smietanka and Thwaites, G. (2025). The Economic Impact of Brexit. [online] doi:https://doi.org/10.3386/w34459.
Novy, D., Sampson, T. and Thomas, C. (2016). Brexit and UK trade. [online] CEP. Available at: https://cep.lse.ac.uk/_NEW/publications/abstract.asp?index=10634 [Accessed 9 Dec. 2025].
Hope, M. (2024). The Impact of Brexit on London’s Economy -2023 Report. [online] Available at: https://www.london.gov.uk/sites/default/files/2024-01/The%20impact%20of%20Brexit%20on%20London%27s%20Economy%20-%202023%20report.pdf.
Office for Budget Responsibility. (2024). How are our Brexit trade forecast assumptions performing? - Office for Budget Responsibility. [online] Available at: https://obr.uk/box/how-are-our-brexit-trade-forecast-assumptions-performing/ [Accessed 9 Dec. 2025].
Du, J., Liu, X., Shepotylo, O. and Shi, Y. (2024). Unbound: UK Trade post-Brexit Centre for Business Prosperity. [online] Available at: https://www.aston.ac.uk/sites/default/files/2024-09/Full%20Report.pdf.
Buigut, S. and Kapar, B. (2025). How Did Brexit Impact UK Trading at the Country Level? Evidence from Real Data. The International Trade Journal, pp.1–20. doi:https://doi.org/10.1080/08853908.2025.2463375.
Which no one can quite describe in full detail. Funny that.