Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

The Treasury’s ‘Hard Brexit’ warning shows Project Fear isn’t over yet

Can someone please tell HM Treasury that the referendum is over? During that campaign, it made history by producing a claim that Brexit would make people £4,300 worse off per household. It was nonsense, debunked here at the time. It was not just a porkie, but a historic porkie: polls showed just 17 per cent believed this figure, around the same number that think Elvis is still alive. Even Sir Will Straw, head of the Remain campaign, admitted later that his case was actually damaged by this ridiculous campaign. The Treasury ought to be holding an inquiry into how such a wilfully misleading figure was eve produced by the civil service, and ever signed off.

But instead, the Treasury is at it again. Today’s Times reveals yet another figure from the ministry of made-up Brexit statistics: leaving the EU could be as much as £66bn in lost tax – that’s £20bn more than Britain’s

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