Project Farce
A year on from Osborne’s dire warnings on Brexit, just one in ten of those forecasts have come true
ONLY one in ten of the ‘Project Fear’ warnings about Brexit last year have turned out to be true, a study reveals today.
A year ago today, the then Chancellor George Osborne published a controversial ‘Treasury analysis’ of the risks of Brexit, claiming that quitting the EU would leave every family £4,300 worse off.
He predicted an ‘immediate’ recession, with the Treasury suggesting half a million people would be thrown out of work.
But while Mr Osborne quickly lost his Cabinet job in the wake of the referendum vote, unemployment has fallen and the British economy has powered ahead of most of its EU rivals.
An analysis by the Change Britain thinktank finds that only one in ten of the gloomy warnings issued by Mr Osborne, David Cameron and other Government figures at the heart of the Remain campaign have turned out to be correct.
In a report today, the organisation analyses 19 key claims made by the Government in the run-up to the referendum last June. Of these, only two have been borne out by subsequent events. By contrast, seven have already proved to be false, with a further seven ‘likely to be false’. The remaining three are judged to be only ‘partially true’.
Labour MP Gisela Stuart, who set up the think-tank with former Tory justice secretary Michael Gove, said the study showed voters were right to reject the lurid claims made by the last government.
‘The Remain campaign fed the public with stories of doom and gloom, but this analysis shows why voters were right to see through their scaremongering,’ she said. ‘Growth continues to be upgraded, employment is at a record high and a number of multinational businesses have made major investment announcements into the UK.
‘The British people had the confidence to reject Project Fear and back Project Hope. Outside the EU, we can begin a process of national renewal and look forward to a strong and flexible economy.’
Jacob Rees- Mogg, a Tory member of the Commons Treasury committee, said the scaremongering had damaged the civil service and ‘shattered’ the reputation of Mr Osborne. He added: ‘ This was a very sorry episodethe claimsin publicmade by life. theI thoughtTreasury were nonsense at the time. ‘The surprise is that the civil service allowed itself to be used for party political purposes in a way it never would during a general election.’ The review was unable to consider some of the most outlandish claims made by the Treasury during the referendum, because they were based on projections over very long periods. For example, the claim that families would be left £4,300 worse off relied on projections of likely GDP growth over 15 years. It also passes no judgment on Mr Osborne’s threat to inflict a ‘punishment Budget’ of tax rises and spending cuts in the event of a Brexit vote, which also failed to materialise.
The report is likely to increase concern about the politicisation of parts of the civil service, particularly the Treasury, as ministers deployed the full power of the Government machine behind the struggling campaign to keep Britain in the EU.
In a report this year, Lord Kerslake, the former head of the civil service, said: ‘ We think Project Fear and the emergency Brexit budget took their toll on the credibility of the Treasury.’
Mr Osborne has refused to apologise for the warnings, saying they were made ‘in good faith’. In September, he said he was glad Brexit had not sparked an immediate recession, but insisted that it could still prove economically damaging.
‘I hope I’m wrong,’ he said. ‘I spent six years turning around the British economy and I don’t want to see bad news.’
‘See through their scaremongering’