For the two years and more the proponents of Brexit have been decrying the factual statements of the consequences of the UK leaving the EU. With the publication of the first tranche of ‘technical papers’ papers setting out the implications of a ‘no deal’ Brexit these cavalier dismissals of the facts and the mistaken promises should be seen for what they are.
Let’s recap on just how wrong they have been:
Doing a deal was going to be easy: said Fox and Davis and Johnson.
Clearly not so, but it has proved all the more difficult because of the civil war within the Conservative Government.
They said if the UK left the EU bureaucracy and red tape could be slashed.
But the technical papers spell out the massive overhead of bureaucracy that a ‘no deal’ would impose on any business involved in import and export with the EU27.
The said that leaving the EU would bring down prices.
But the technical papers make clear that the cost of bureaucracy, tariffs, credit card charges and customs paperwork alone will increase the cost of goods and force businesses to increase prices of products including food.
They said claims that medicines could be in short supply were scaremongering.
Yet the technical papers talk about stockpiling medicines to counter the effects of a ‘no deal’ Brexit because international supply chains are a fact of life in 2018.
They said the NHS would benefit
But the NHS is already being hurt and in the event of no deal, as well as the uncertainty over secure supplies of medicines, faces difficulties with the supply of radiotherapy materials to treat cancers and of highly qualified staff from the EU.
We were again told we were scaremongering when we alerted the public to the danger to food supplies posed by a hard Brexit.
But now the technical papers, the supermarket chains and the farmers have all made it clear that customs delays and the absence of agreement on common regulations are certain to disrupt the supply of foods to the UK and hammer the UK’s agricultural exports too. The next time you hear a Brexiteer dismiss this stuff ask yourself (and them if they allow it) what possible reason would the farmers, the supermarkets and the Port of Dover have to lie about this stuff.
They said they would do their own trade deals.
But is fact nobody is interested in even talking about a trade deal until the UK has agreed its relationship with the EU single market AND if ‘no deal’ exists then the UK’s current trading arrangements with 60 plus countries will no longer be valid.
They said the implications of the border in Ireland could be easily sorted out.
But in reality they haven’t got a clue. The technical papers now suggest that those seeking to do business with the Republic of Ireland should get advice from the Irish Government!
They said ‘they need us more than we need them’.
But both the technical papers and the economic analysis of, well, everybody demonstrates that this is simply not the case and never was. Given the choice of worrying about trade with one country and trade with another 26, not surprisingly, the remaining member states chose the 26. Detailed analysis also demonstrates that only a few EU states are significantly affected by Brexit – our most immediate neighbours: Ireland (hardest hit), The Netherlands, Belgium, Germany (mainly the western regions) and France (mainly the north). In other words gravity still applies to trade.
They said it would save money.
But the Government has told us they have 7,000 Civil Servants working on Brexit and the money set aside for another 9,000 (in total that’s at least half a billion a year, by our reckoning) AND that’s before the Government subsidises all the things that are currently paid for through the European Union and pays extra to do so in many areas.
They said no deal is better than a bad deal.
But the technical papers show that no deal is the worst deal possible.
So what does all this mean?
It shows that just about everything that has been peddled over the past two years by the Brexiteers has proved to be wrong. It shows that far from being ‘project fear’, the facts show that Britain will suffer badly in the event of a ‘no deal Brexit’. Yet, still, the likes of Mr Rees-Mogg, who seems to think a cut glass accent is a substitute for knowledge, continue to press for an outcome that will patently damage the UK for decades and hit the poorest hardest.
The Brexiteers now talk about the UK’s survival through a ‘no deal’ Brexit.
I’ve no doubt the UK can survive no deal - but we weren’t promised mere survival, we were promised the sunny uplands.
It’s entirely fair and democratic that the public should take a view on this new evidence.
Note
As you can see from the links with this article, the evidence is not exactly hard to find, Sources include the not exatly EU-loving Daily Mail, the Telegraph, the Financial Times as well as the BBC, Politico, The Guardian and The Independent as well as others. These sources in turn quote other academic reports and official sites.
