Next time it comes to redesigning the PPE course at Oxford, I suggest a module beginning with a quotation from George Osborne. It’s something he said to the Treasury Select Committee in May, back when he was still Chancellor: ‘If you look at the sheer weight of opinion, it is overwhelmingly the case that people who look at the case for leaving the EU come to the conclusion it would make the country poorer, and it would make the individuals in the country poorer, too.’ There might be advantages to Brexit, he said, ‘but let’s not pretend we’d be economically better off’.
In other words: it wasn’t just George Osborne’s opinion that Britain would be worse off if we left the EU; it was objective fact. It wasn’t just that he thought he was winning the argument; there was no argument to be had, because the experts agreed beyond all reasonable doubt.
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