Brexit will leave UK poorer, admits govt

: Observers and those who voted in the 2016 referendum to remain in the EU see Brexit as an act of ‘self-harm’, but on Wednesday chancellor Philip Hammond admitted that the UK will be worse off under all scenarios, including the current controversial deal.

The House of Commons is due to vote on December 11 on the deal endorsed by the European Council on Sunday. Prime Minister Theresa May has been travelling across the country, meeting members of the public and businessmen, insisting that the deal is in the national interest.

As the prospect of the deal getting parliamentary support is “doomed” – in former defence secretary Michael Fallon’s words – Hammond indicated the government had begun contingency planning should it lose the vote, plunging the UK into more uncertainty.

Hammond said: “If you look at this purely from an economic point of view, yes there will be a cost to leaving the European Union because there will be impediments to our trade. The economy will be slightly smaller in the prime minister’s preferred version of the future partnership.”

“I’m not trying to scare anybody and I reject the term ‘scaremongering’. If the government wasn’t doing anything about the possibility that we could leave the European Union in just four months’ time with no deal at all, if we weren’t making any preparations, I’d be on this programme and you’d rightly be attacking me for not preparing Britain for a possibility which clearly could happen”.

The Democratic Unionist Party, which backs the mintory government of May, will vote against the deal, along with the opposition Labour, Liberal Democrats and the Scottish National Party.