George Osborne has warned today that Brexit will cost each household in the UK around £4,500. The Chancellor also said leaving the EU would make Britain ‘permanently poorer’. But is there any truth in Osborne’s claims? In this Spectator Coffee House podcast, Fraser Nelson joins Isabel Hardman and James Forsyth to discuss the figures and whether the numbers add up.
Speaking on the podcast, Isabel Hardman says the Treasury report shows a change in argument by the Government in making the case for staying in the EU:
‘The really interesting thing about this is that George Osborne is doing this at all. He and his Tory colleagues at the start of this year thought that the EU referendum campaign would be about security and talking about the threat to Britain’s national security of Brexit. But that hasn’t had as much purchase as they thought.’
James Forsyth says:
‘I think the big thing about this document is that it seems to make some fairly heroic assumptions about what will happen to the EU: that the single market in services will be completed, that the digital single market will happen. Given that the extent of Britain’s influence has been slightly shown up by the renegotiation, assuming that these long-standing goals of the British government will happen seems to me a tad on the optimistic side.’
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