Chancellor's predictions for Brexit: A price worth paying to quit EU?

  • Brexit
Leave.EU says the chancellor's 'flimsy' predictions are a price worth paying Credit: PA

There hasn't been a great deal of reaction so far from the Leave campaign after George Osborne's 200-page Treasury document on the cost of Brexit.

Vote Leave issued a statement from the Tory MP John Redwood saying the document can't be trusted because it came from the same Treasury that tried in vain to save the ERM.

I did think delving back to the early 1990s to criticise the Treasury wasn't perhaps the Leave team playing their strongest hand.

So far the greatest criticism centres on whether we can really trust a prediction on the size of the economy in 15 years time, when the Treasury can get its predictions wrong in the four months between the chancellor's Autumn Statement and his Budget in March.

The official leave campaign has given only a muted response to the chancellor's predictions Credit: PA

The grassroots Leave.EU group, however, has just issued a new take on the '£4,300 worse off' claim.

They say:

  • Osborne's flimsy worst-case scenario for Brexit works out at a cost of just 21p per person, per hour in exchange for national independence and secure borders

Leave.EU says it's a very small price to pay.

But it also noted the document is based on immigration staying at similar levels to what it is now.

That begs the question - will the reforms David Cameron secured in his summit in Brussels in February actually have any effect on the number of migrants who want to come to the UK?

At the time, critics suggested they would not.

And now it appears the government acknowledges that higher migration - and therefore higher GDP and productivity - is actually part of the reason why the economy will do better inside the EU than outside.