Following the government's leaked economic assessment a couple of weeks ago, Economists for Free Trade, including Roger Bootle and Patrick Minford, have prepared a rebuttal (HERE) claiming the UK economy will be 2-4% better off by 2030 as a result of Brexit. Needless to say this is at odds with most serious economists who say we will be that much - and more - worse off than if we remain in the EU.
The FT has already described their report as "absurd" but David Smith, Economics Editor at The Sunday Times has also written a scathing piece about it this week.
The report makes some amazing assumptions such as after Brexit there will be no extra border costs. Bear in mind Holland is already recruiting up to 930 new border staff and say the UK will need "thousands" more. They also assume big gains from scrapping EU regulations, something Davis has flatly refused to do and considering we are already the lightest regulated EU economy it's hard to see how it could be done without hitting third world levels of labour and environmental standards.
But finally, they assume we will drop all tariffs and trade tariff free with all countries. Agriculture and manufacturing would disappear more or less overnight.
So, as Mr Smith eloquently and logically puts it:
"None of this is going to happen. And if you can get to a tiny positive result about the economic consequences of Brexit only with unrealistic assumptions like these, it reinforces the view that leaving the EU will indeed be damaging"
When your opponents are at the bottom of the barrel and scraping you know you're winning.
