BREXITEERS FIGHT BACK AGAINST PESSIMISTIC FORECASTS

WESTMINSTER’S Brexiteers are intensifying their fightback against the Remainer guerrillas they perceive as clinging on to key establishment positions.

This week, the Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg spoke for many of his colleagues when he branded Mark Carney an “enemy of Brexit”. The Bank of England governor has become a target for criticism for excessively gloom-laden forecasting and perpetual warnings of “uncertainty” about Britain’s prospects outside the EU.

Another financial chief who needs to brace for incoming fire from Leavers is Office for Budget Responsibility chairman Robert Chote. Tory MPs are anticipating his Treasury watchdog will deliver another deluge of gloomy prognostications for economic growth when its Budget day forecasts are unveiled.

Senior Tory backbencher John Redwood raised concerns about the Office for Budget Responsibility’s track record in forecasting earlier this week.

“I have no problems with more pessimistic forecasts if that is needed to make them more accurate,” Mr Redwood wrote. “My complaints have been about a run of pessimistic forecasts that have been wrong.”

He noted expectations that forecasts for productivity growth, and therefore for economic output and tax revenues, will be downgraded at the Budget. “This will face the Chancellor with a more difficult set of figures against which to make his Budget judgment,” Mr Redwood wrote on his blog.

Both Mr Carney and Mr Chote were appointed by former chancellor George Osborne, the chief architect of the Treasury’s “project fear” campaign in the run-up to last year’s referendum. They are both highly respected economists dedicated to maintaining their independence and political impartiality. Yet Brexit-backing Tories are increasingly questioning how the economy can be prepared for life outside the EU with a financial regulatory framework set up before the country’s decision to leave the bloc.

Demands for radical change in that framework are bound to get louder as the progress towards the March 2019 departure date continues.

Eurosceptics will want to see sweeping changes in the personnel at the top of the financial establishment. Mr Carney, Mr Chote and others will need to brace themselves for many more Brexiteer brickbats.