The schools will all get new books. The hospitals will all be rebuilt. Long-suffering public sector workers will finally get a pay rise and there will be a ton of money to fight climate change. Liberal Democrat leader Jo Swinson is promising there will be a £50 billion ‘Remain Bonus’ to spend on public services after she has won the general election and cancelled our departure from the European Union. If she weren’t quite so humourless she might even be tempted to put that figure on the side of a bus.
But hold on. From die-hard Remainers, who accuse the other side of peddling dodgy figures and who pride themselves on ‘evidence-based’ policy-making, that claim is more than little outrageous. In fact, there wouldn’t be any ‘bonus’ from Remaining in the EU. It is a number that makes even the £350m on the Leave bus look like something from a rigorously peer-reviewed academic journal.
The Lib Dems argue the economy will grow faster if we stay inside the EU and that will translate into higher tax receipts. The
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