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Even if it were a correct prediction, which it isn’t it would be irrelevant and more so as time goes on. The excellent Robert Tombs has countered: “The supposed ‘4 per cent hit’ that is often bandied about comes from a 2021 OBR guesstimate that the UK might grow by 4 per cent…
RT @hammer_mo: @IainLees @john4brexit What’s the real number then? because nobody is buying it has had a positive effect!
Amazing how Brexiters have shuffled from predicting the dawning of…
NitterJohn Longworth (@john4brexit)Even if it were a correct prediction, which it isn’t it would be irrelevant and more so as time goes on. The excellent Robert Tombs has countered: “The supposed ‘4 per cent hit’ that is often bandied about comes from a 2021 OBR guesstimate that the UK might grow by 4 per cent less over the long term than if there had been no Brexit, not of course a ‘hit’ to the economy’s present level of 4 %, and evidently not every year. This forecast is anyway flawed by mistaken assumptions about immigration and an empirically weak claim about a link between trade and productivity. The real data that have since appeared show that there may have been a fall (so small as to be hard to measure) in exports to the EU, but certainly not enough to have a major impact on GDP.
If Mr Ellwood had his way and we rejoined the EU, what would be the cost? The most obvious would be our annual financial contribution. If Brexit has (let us say) has caused a fall of 3 per cent to 5 per cent in UK goods exports to the EU, that amounts to £5 billion to £8 billion (in 2019 prices); whereas membership dues (net) were £8 billion to £11 billion in 2018 and would be much higher now. In other words, any export gain from rejoining the EU would be more than cancelled out by the membership fee.
What in fact would be the 'gain' from rejoining to the average voter? The Bertelsmann Stiftung (a pro-EU German think tank) calculated this back in 2014. They worked out average income gains for citizens from EU integration between 1992 to 2012. Denmark was the winner, with every Dane making €500 per year – perhaps enough for a modest family holiday. But our gain in Britain was a princely €10 per year each – not quite enough for a month’s subscription to The New European.
Compare the Bertelsmann Stiftung estimate with our membership payments. If their estimate is right, it was costing us roughly €200 each to get back €10 each from Single Market membership. Some Members of Parliament seem to think this was an attractive deal.
There would also be the potentially crippling consequences of joining the Eurozone. Another German thinktank, the Centre for European Policy, estimated in 2019 that Euro membership since inception had cost every Frenchman €56,000 and every Italian €74,000 in lost growth. I wonder whether Mr Ellwood has worked out how much it might cost us? “