Oh, that old figure,” said a cabinet minister airily on being confronted with new evidence that Brexit will deliver a 4 per cent long-term hit to the UK’s GDP. The facts may be ever less disputable but the Conservatives are not feeling the cost.
Brexiters have pulled off a double fix. Not only are they waving away uncomfortable truths, they have created a climate where opponents are nervous of raising them. Tories argue that the country no longer wants to hear about Brexit, except on those occasions when they want to trumpet its upsides. Even to point out a problem is to invite a gaslighting by Leavers, who swerve the issue by denouncing their critic as a Remoaner. By such techniques, even the primary opposition is unwilling to hold the government to account.
And yet it is necessary not to let this go by default — not because Brexit might be reversed, but because the consequences remain live. The 4 per cent figure comes from the Office for Budget Responsibility, reinforced by the latest trade data. By contrast the long-term scarring caused by Covid is put at 2 per cent of GDP. To put it simply, Brexit is doing twice as much long-term damage to the UK economy as the pandemic.