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Hello and welcome to more or less your weekly guide to the numbers all around us in the

news and in life.

Now I realise this may come as a surprise to some of you but people on social media are

arguing about Brexit.

A headline in the new European magazine read,

Brexit already costing more than UK's nut contributions to EU over 47 years.

Now that's not true according to the first sentence of the article underneath that headline

which claims that Brexit will cost more by the end of this year but let's not split

hairs. It is an interesting claim which emerges from comparing two figures.

One is an estimate by Bloomberg News of the damage done to the UK economy since the 2016

referendum vote. It says the cost was £130 billion by the end of 2019 and will reach £200

billion by the end of 2020. The second figure is the total net contribution to the EU budget

from the UK which according to the House of Commons Library adds up to £178 billion.

Now the second figure is pretty straightforward but what about the first?

How could we estimate the damage done by Brexit to the UK economy? And since Brexit hasn't

happened yet why should we think there's been any damage at all? I put these questions to an

independent arbiter, the chief economist of the Institute for Government, Gemma Tetlo.

It's obviously a really important question what impact has the vote for Brexit had on the UK

economy but it's an incredibly hard one to answer because it requires you to answer the question

what would have been the path of the UK economy since the summer of 2016 if we'd voted the other way?

It hasn't stopped people trying though, hasn't it? It hasn't stopped people trying. I think it's

...