Nothing dampens zeal for Brexit

THE Brexit vote has cost the UK economy almost £20bn (around £300m for each of the 66 weeks since the June 2016 referendum), according to estimates from four economists from the Centre for Economic Policy Research, who estimated what the likely path of the UK economy would have been if the referendum result had gone the other way.

The Office for Budget Responsibility projected last week that UK growth would be just 1.5 per cent in 2017 and a measly 1.4 per cent in 2018.

The London School of Economics’ Centre for Economic Performance has estimated that the Brexit-related issues has already cost the average UK household in the UK around £400 a year.

Now we’ve had the announcement that all four members of the board of the government’s Social Mobility Commission, including its chairman Alan Milburn, have stood down, claiming, among other things, that the government was too focused on Brexit to deal with this as an issue.

Those of us who keep a weather eye open for what’s happening in the US can reasonably speculate that the likelihood of a favourable trade deal with the US is more remote than when the then President Barack Obama said in April 2016 that Britain would go to the “back of the queue” for trade deals with the US if it votes to leave the European Union.

And, to top all that, some of its most enthusiastic supporters – among them contributors to this page – will have all of us believe that the Brexit project has already made the UK a better place to live, and that the improvements we have already seen will be even greater once we have finally severed our ties with the EU.

Nothing, it appears, dampens their zeal, or, for that matter, gives them pause for thought. Kevin Cryan Radford