We have set out elsewhere the questions and doubts about the objectivity of the report, which was, after all, commissioned by a Chancellor committed to keeping Britain in the EU.
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“Over 250,000 people came to Britain from Europe past year”.
Brexit campaigners say: The Government is not predicting a contraction in the size of the economy between 2015 and 2030, but is claiming that the economy would grow less quickly than if we remained in the EU.
“The conclusion is clear: for Britain’s economy and for families, leaving the European Union would be the most extraordinary self- inflicted wound”, he added.
“These people who go round saying Britain would have all the benefits of the EU without any of the obligations – that is economically illiterate and it frankly totally misunderstands the nature of the relationship that Britain might be able to strike outside the EU”, Osborne said on Monday, The Guardian reports.
The latter point about Britain’s trade with the rest of the world is key.
Leave campaigners have dismissed the findings, with some, including MP Bernard Jenkin, describing Mr Osborne’s use of Treasury staff as part of the remain campaign an “abuse”.
Osborne assumed Britain would reach a trade deal similar to the one Canada is about to seal with the EU.
£36bn, as the Treasury document says, would be “equivalent” to raising the basic rate of income tax by around 8p from 20p to 28p.
The Remain campaign has been branded “Project Fantasy” by its opponents for its alleged lack of economic clarity but Mr Gove will hit back, accusing opponents of “wanting us to believe that Britain is broken and beaten”. If the United Kingdom were to leave the European Union, assumptions must be made about the terms on which this would be done and how the government would fill the policy vacuum left in areas where the European Union now has competence.
In his Daily Telegraph column, Mr Johnson wrote: “All the usual suspects are out there, trying to confuse the British public and to persuade them that they must accept the accelerating loss of democratic self-government as the price of economic prosperity”.
“It sounds incredibly appealing to say we’re going leave behind the large market that’s not growing that fast”, said David Bach, senior lecturer in global business at the Yale School of Management.
And to Brexiteers who claim that Britain’s trade deficit with the EU puts it in a strong bargaining position, the Treasury observes that only 3.1% of EU GDP depends on trade with Britain, whereas 12.6% of British GDP depends on trade with the EU.
Jonathan Portes, a senior fellow at the National Institute of Economic and Social Research and an expert on migration, said the Treasury forecasts were flawed since they assume no changes in net immigration levels if the Leave campaign is victorious.
There are still 68 days until the eagerly anticipated European Union referendum, but that hasn’t stopped brokers and analysts already outlying the potential impacts of “BREXIT” on markets. “Wages would be lower and prices would be higher”, he said.
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“How could other European countries give us a better deal than they have given themselves?” he asked.
