Easier to find Nessie than a Brexit benefit
THE £52m awarded to the Liverpool City Region from the “shared prosperity fund” announced by Michael Gove disguises a problem with the Levelling Up agenda that was always evident – it’s called money.
There are no new funds, just a re-labelling of previous announcements which, after a decade of austerity, amount to nothing.
You don’t need to be Einstein to do the arithmetic, with the region receiving £80m for the previous three years and the certainty of EU structural funds in the future replaced by £52m which Gove assures us will “help spread opportunity and level up the country”.
To add insult to injury, Chancellor Rishi Sunak was forced to concede in evidence to the Commons Treasury Committee that Brexit “was inhibiting UK trade”.
The Independent Office for Budget Responsibility reported that the UK has lost 15% of overseas trade as a result of Brexit and that trade deals rolled over by the government – and those being negotiated and in prospect – will only compensate for a tiny fraction of the losses as a result of the referendum vote.
Sunak has apparently developed an aversion to the OBR which has embarrassed him simply by doing its job, highlighting post-Brexit arrangements, fashioned in such a way that little or no thought was given to the consequences, and which are now panning out in the manner routinely dismissed as Project Fear.
The All-Party Public Accounts Committee, chaired by Dame Meg Hillier, reported that the only detectable impact of Brexit is “increased costs, paperwork and border delays”.
The prime minister, asked the same question by the commons liaison committee that Sunak faced, suggested that it was because exporters weren’t trying hard enough!
Just as there is no Loch Ness Monster, there are no advantages to Brexit.
Governments will normally be judged on their policy programmes, but this one’s legacy will be measured by the erosion of public trust in politicians.
Frank Rice