Exposing the lies behind Project Fear

EXACTLY a year ago, in those fractious, febrile days of the referendum campaign, the Treasury produced a report on the supposed impact of leaving the EU.

The brainchild of then-Chancellor George Osborne, it formed the centrepiece of Project Fear and deployed a barrage of apocalyptic forecasts suggesting that cutting ties with Brussels would leave us isolated and penniless in a hostile world.

Not only has none of this come true but according to a new analysis by the Change Britain think-tank, the picture is almost exactly the reverse. Just one in ten of Mr Osborne’s predictions has been realised, while the worst ones have all proved to be demonstrably false.

Let’s remind ourselves what they were. The report said a Brexit vote would bring ‘immediate and profound economic shock’, unemployment would rise by 500,000, we’d fall into recession and trade would stagnate.

Yet a year on we have record employment, strong growth, and non-EU countries queuing up to strike new trade deals. We wouldn’t be rash enough to suggest there will not be economic storms ahead, but Britain is in much better shape to weather them than the crumbling eurozone.

Perhaps the most depressing aspect of the Treasury report is that it was drawn up by civil servants. Supposedly politically neutral, Whitehall colluded with Mr Osborne in trying to pass off a naked piece of propaganda as genuine research.

It didn’t work of course, but is it any wonder the British people have become so disillusioned with politics?