Rejoining the EU will cost £22billion a year warns former Vote Leave chief

Christopher Hope
Fri, 17 Apr 2026 05:00:02 +0000

Britons will have to pay £22billion a year to rejoin the European Union, the head of the winning Brexit campaign has said.

Lord Elliott of Mickle Fell, who as Matthew Elliott was chief executive of the victorious Vote Leave campaign, also said that polling he has seen shows that most people do not want to rejoin the EU.

Polls have repeatedly suggested that most Britons are concerned about the cost and impact of the UK's decision to leave the EU 10 years ago in June.

However, Lord Elliott told GB News' Chopper's Political Podcast: "The polling I look at shows that people don't want to rejoin the polling. They're still worried about the cost of rejoining."

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The peer said that the cost of rejoining would be £22billion a year - three times the UK's prisons budget.

Lord Elliott said: "The bill will be roughly £22billion... That's the estimated fee we'd have to pay every year to be a member of the EU now."

Lord Elliott said the figure was based on the inflation increase of the rebate which the UK received back from the EU at the time of Brexit in January 2020.

In 2020, the UK paid £17billion to be a member of the EU - or £22billlion today, according to inflation calculations by the peer, he said.

The peer added that his calculation was "based on inflation, what we were paying last time, inflation plus losing the rebate to rejoin".

Lord Elliott also took issue with claims made by Chancellor Rachel Reeves that Brexit had lost the UK 8 per cent in economic growth.

He questioned the accuracy of the figure which he said was based on "a combination" of the economies of US and Estonia.

He said: "What they really should pick is basically France and Germany. And actually we've outperformed France and Germany."

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The claims were rejected by Sir Ed Davey, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, who is fiercely critical of Brexit and wants the UK to rejoin the EU's customs union.

He said later on Chopper's Political Podcast: "People want to see trade increased and they want to see our businesses have reduced costs because unfortunately there's a lot of bureaucracy that's come with Brexit.

"Lots of red tape, lots of delays, lots of extra costs. And that's bad for business. It's bad for trade and that's bad for the wider economy, people's jobs and the money going to the exchequer.

"So we've got to reverse that I think. And I think there's a really strong case for that."

Watch or listen to Chopper's Political Podcast on YouTube, Spotify or Apple podcasts from 6am on Friday.