Press

The sector recognised how much it stood to lose if it did not keep its connections with the EU but the travelling caravan ruffled more than a few feathers. “There are lots of stories of arrogance . . . about the UK going round European capitals and saying ‘you need us’. That got people’s backs up,” said Sam Lowe, a trade expert at the Centre for European Reform think-tank.

The People’s Vote campaign says the economy shrunk by £40 billion to £51 billion a year compared to where it would be if Britain voted to stay in 2016. Economists at the Centre for European Reform say the £360 million a week black hole – more than the £350 million Brexit boost bus claim – hit tax revenue, deepening and extending austerity.

Charles Grant, the director of the Centre for European Reform, is confident that if the crunch comes EU member states will strike bilateral side-deals with the UK to cushion the blow. “For now the Commission is taking a strong line, but EU member states will have to look after their own interests”, he predicts.

Charles Grant of the Centre for European Reform, a think-tank, argues the concerns over the UK “are overblown” given UK interests in maintaining goodwill with the EU, whatever government holds office in London,“The Jacob Rees-Mogg strategy of guerrilla warfare from within would preclude that,” said Mr Grant. “And if a hardline Eurosceptic government sought to provoke the EU into forcing the British out via a no-deal situation, parliament would not stand for it. Jacob Rees-Mogg can huff and puff and feel good about what he says but it’s not a strategy that will win support among MPs.”

One of the leading Remain think-tanks is the Centre for European Reform (CER), whose very name denotes an acceptance that all is not right with the EU. But its work shows that leaving is not the answer.Even before the calamity that almost certainly awaits us if King, Jacob Rees-Mogg et al have their way, the CER finds that in the period from the referendum on 23 June 2016 to December 2018, the UK economy became 2.5% smaller than it would have been if we had voted to Remain. The CER states: “The knock-on hit to the public finances is £19bn per annum – or £360m a week.” Does £360m a week remind you of another figure? That’s right: one of the many lies of the Leave campaign was that the NHS would benefit by £350m a week.

As Sam Lowe from the Centre for European Reform has argued convincingly, a customs union does not simply prevent the UK from developing an independent trade policy; instead it requires it to align its tariff regime with the EU’s common external tariff.