Patrick Minford, the Brexiteers favourite economist and the only one who sees a massive positive impact in the UK leaving the world's biggest and richest trading bloc, has a piece on Brexit Central (HERE). Mainstream economists, with virtual unanimity, say Brexit will have greater or lesser negative consequences and many of them ridicule Minford for (a) making completely ridiculous assumptions and (b) never publishing the background to his conclusions. With Olympic class chutzpah his latest article accuses Phillip Hammond of the same faults.
He says it's time the Chancellor came clean. But if you look at the evidence that The Treasury uses for its own forecasts, they are often from independent forecasters as well as the IFS and of course the OBR.
Take the leaked cross Whitehall briefing that was presented to ministers in January and later leaked to the press (HERE) on page 17 you can see the Treasury prediction is more or less in the middle of a range of independent forecasts, with even the enthusiastically Brexit supporting IEA claiming Brexit will not make a huge difference. Rabobank on the other hand see a massive drop in GDP. Virtually every forecast shows a negative impact.
But see on the extreme right of the graph (how appropriate that is, eh?) way out on its own, is the wildly optimistic +7% growth from EFT. This is Economists for Free Trade headed up by none other than Patrick Minford. It's clear that EFT are not only alone in seeing a positive outcome but uniquely see a massive positive outcome, with our GDP growing by an extra £140 billion a year. No serious economist believes you could get anywhere close to that figure from any free trade deals.
It is Minford who is out of step, not The Treasury but he argues as if he's right and everybody else is wrong.
It isn't impossible that he is right of course, but what is The Treasury and Phillip Hammond to do? Throw away their own calculations and those of all the other mainstream forecasters and adopt his widely ridiculed outlier numbers? And then to commit government future spending plans according to his optimistic predictions? This really is impossible as he must know. Brexit Central only publish this stuff for the consumption of all the true believers, to keep their spirits up and give them someone to blame later on.
