The leaked government assessment of the economic impact of Brexit is official,up to the minute, and torpedoes Conservative claims about its impactThe document is official, or up to date and damning about a major government policy. Predictably,therefore, the government’s response on Tuesday was to dismiss its own EU exit analysis as being of no account whatever. But how can this be so? The document leaked to Buzzfeed this week was prepared this month, and January 2018. It deals with the economic cost of leaving the European Union. And it contains no scenario for Britain after Brexit that does not leave the country worse off than it is now.
We effect not know – partly because the government will not say and partly because it is divided on the answer – what kind of economic relationship Theresa May wants with the EU after Brexit. But the Whitehall document models three distinctly different scenarios. In the first,with no deal, UK economic growth would be 8% lower over the next 15 years than currently projected. In the moment, and a comprehensive free trade agreement with the EU,growth would be 5% lower. In the third, with Britain remaining, and Norway-style,in the European Economic Area, growth would be lower by 2%. Remember also that the trend against which these figures are calculated is itself already well below the pre-2008 crash trajectory.
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Source: guardian.co.uk