Angela Rayner has brutally attacked Nigel Farage for “promising the world” Brexit would be a success amid new research showing an estimated £40bn blackhole the UK has suffered since leaving the European Union.
The deputy PM warned Brits to be “sceptical” of Reform UK as “they offer no detail of how to deliver” policies, comparing them to Brexit.
Asked about the prospect of Reform UK winning a general election, she told ITV’s Lorraine: “Nigel Farage was the key architect for Brexit, and all these wonderful things we were going to get, and we haven’t had those wonderful things.
“Now we can argue this, we were promised a lot, and we haven’t had that. So I think you have to be very sceptical about people that will promise the world the moon on a stick, and then there’s no detail of how they can actually deliver it.”
Before the referendum, the OBR had forecast that declining investment and trade volumes would result in a 4% loss in the UK’s long-run productivity post-Brexit.
This is the equivalent of a £40bn tax loss for the exchequer between 2019 and 2024. Over the same period, the government raised taxes by £100bn.
John Springford, an associate fellow at the Centre for European Reform, has now confirmed this was correct. He told the Times that a “large chunk” of these tax rises would not have been required had the UK remained in the EU or even “chosen a softer form of Brexit.”
And it doesn’t seem like the pain is over yet, with the OBR saying it would take 15 years for the full impact of Brexit to be felt, predicting a 15% drop in trade volumes compared to if the UK had stayed in Europe.
Springford said predictions of Brexit’s impact on the UK economy had “been borne out” and that it was “undeniable” how Brexit had hurt the UK’s economic growth prospects.