Brexit ‘will hurt UK economy’
CHANCELLOR SAYS UK WILL TAKE ECONOMIC HIT FOR LEAVING EUROPEAN UNION May has less than a fortnight to convince hostile MPs to back the deal in a December 11 vote.
Britain will be economically worse off for leaving the European Union (EU), Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond said yesterday, as Prime Minister Theresa May took the Brexit divorce deal to a sceptical Scotland.
Hammond’s Treasury said that over the next 15 years, Britain would take an economic hit from leaving the EU in any circumstances, including under the agreement struck between London and Brussels that May is trying to sell.
May has less than a fortnight to convince hostile MPs to back the deal in a December 11 vote and avoid plunging Brexit into chaos, four months out from Britain’s March 29 departure date.
“Purely from an economic point of view, there will be a cost to leaving the EU because there will be impediments to our trade. What the prime minister’s deal does is absolutely minimise these costs,” Hammond said, ahead of the Treasury report’s publication.
“This is a very modest impact on the overall size of the economy as the optimum way of leaving the EU,” said the chancellor of the exchequer.
He insisted that the economy was not the only consideration and controlling Britain’s borders, money and laws also had value.
“We have to look not only at the economy but the need to heal a fractured nation,” Hammond said.
Some Brexiteers think it keeps Britain shackled too closely to Brussels while pro-EU lawmakers think the terms are worse than staying in the bloc and want a second referendum.
An online Survation poll of 1 030 adults for the Daily Mail newspaper found that 37% supported the deal – up 10% on November 15 – and 35% opposed it, down 14%.
Some 41% wanted MPs to vote for the deal and 38% wanted them to vote it down, in the survey conducted on Tuesday.
The poll also found that some 48% supported holding a new Brexit referendum and 34% were against.
If the parliamentary vote is lost, 48% said May should resign while 40% said she should stay.
The British government and the EU have said that there is no alternative deal available than the one agreed.
If MPs vote it down, Hammond said the government would “consider very carefully how to proceed” through “uncharted political territory”, by studying which MPs voted which way.
“It is very clear what there is not a consensus for in parliament; what is more difficult to discern is what there is a consensus for,” the chancellor said.
After facing lawmakers in the House of Commons, May was to head to Scotland to appeal over the heads of MPs to ordinary voters to support her plan. – AFP