Tory attacks on the Brexit impact report will help Corbyn

The good news is that the latest civil service analysis of the most likely impact of Brexit is more optimistic than previous civil service estimates of Brexit’s consequences for the British economy. The bad news is that they’re still pretty gloomy. The best case scenario, modelled for officials at the Department for Exiting the EU, envisages a two per cent hit to GDP by the 2030s. The worst, trading in a ‘No deal is better than a bad deal’ environment, suggests an economy eight per cent smaller than would otherwise be the case. 

As Brexit bonuses go this seems on the thin side. No wonder the reaction to Buzzfeed’s scoop on the latest analysis is an exercise in proving the reality of confirmation bias. If you’re a Remainer, you’re probably in a ‘Told You So, You Fools’ mood this morning; if you’re a Leaver, you might be arguing it’s all meaningless anyway because you can’t make reliable estimates of something so complicated and uncertain as the state of the British economy in 15 years’ time.