Henry Newman is a director of the pro Brexit lobby group known as Open Europe. He has a piece on the Politico website (HERE) doing a heroic job of water muddying and bravado by suggesting unless the EU backs down the UK could (and should) leave with no deal. He claims a new report by him and his colleagues, due out today, will show there is only a very marginal impact on our GDP of about 2.2% by 2030. Even this could be mitigated they will claim, by a unilateral reduction in tariffs that would then see only a 0.5% reduction in our GDP by 2030.
But Open Europe have a bit of a problem. Their forecasting is not that good. Before the referendum, in March 2015 they claimed the top 100 EU regulations were costing us £33.3 billion a year (HERE). This was picked up by Change Britain, another pro-Brexit lobby group, which decided only 59 should be scrapped, the other 41 were useful and should be kept. But when they examined these 59 more closely even they (a pro leave mob) eventually concluded only £1.2 billion could actually be saved - of which £1 billion came from scrapping the Data Protection Act! (HERE). In other words there were no savings at all.
How anyone is supposed to take their "research" seriously I don't know.
These "reports" that keep appearing are designed to shore up support and convince the dedicated leavers that Brexit is still a good idea. However, it cannot go unremarked that even they, with all the guile and determination of a group that has campaigned for years for Brexit, can't quite make a positive case for it. After 14 years of uncertainty, chaos and muddle, we are only going to be about £10 billion a year worse off.
There is more criticism of the Open Europe report by Armand Menon and Jonathan Portes in The Guardian (HERE)
There is more criticism of the Open Europe report by Armand Menon and Jonathan Portes in The Guardian (HERE)
Brexit - is it really worth it?
