Irish Examiner view: The harm done by Brexit keeps stacking up but nobody is talking about it

The data suggests Britain has been severely financially hurt by Brexit but nobody in authority there seems to want to discuss it 

Post-Christmas sales go on as normal but families and businesses throughout Britain are feeling the 5.5% shrinking of its economy, and will pay for the £40bn tax shortfall due to Brexit. Picture: James Manning/PA

Even to those for whom blinkered politics is the norm, the absence of real, substantive, and considered debate on the effects — current and future — of Brexit on the British economy, its cost-of-living crisis, and its ability to trade freely and profitably with the wider world is shocking.

Brexit has become the child of which no one can speak — not freely anyway. It has become a horror story which Britain can hardly bring itself to discuss and as the days and weeks pass by, the impact of the decision to leave the EU is becoming ever more clear and ever more ghastly for the country as a whole and its people.

The latest, very bleak estimates of the cost of Brexit suggest the loss of some £40bn (€45.3bn) in tax revenue to the UK government and it is believed that the economy is now 5.5% smaller than it would have been had the country remained in the EU.

One in five of those who voted for the schism now believe they erred, according to the latest polls. But while there are huge gaps between what politicians are telling the British public and what accumulated data is telling us, it now seems impossible to suggest anything other than that Britain has been severely financially hurt by Brexit.

Nobody in authority there seems to want to talk about it, however.