crouch

Indeed it will, but that's not what we're talking about here. We are talking about an actual state (Brexit GDP - the GDP that will henceforward be reported as actual GDP) and a theoretical state - the GDP we would have achieved if a member of the EU. The increment between the two - which we will assume is positive - is a purely theoretical construct; it is not a loss that we can experience - you can't miss what you've never had. It will be an imputed figure. Reverting to the numbers you quoted from the OBR, they have presumably calculated a mixture of known spending/ income loss as a result of Brexit together with calculated imputations for the rest to arrive at the "Brexit shortfall" of £17bn. In the short term you can do this because the long term dynamics of Brexit have not yet kicked in but they eventually will. After this time the Brexit related spending will not be so easily identifiable and the calculated imputations will become greater and then the "Brexit shortfall" will become purely speculative and, might I suggest, pointless.

And does that mean it does not get discussed and that there are no political consequences from refusing to discuss it?

Ah, now we have a glimmer that we are talking at cross purposes. I was not talking about forecasts and deviations therefrom at all; I am talking about an actual state. In 2021 our actual GDP will be Y. Y is the Brexit GDP because we have left the EU. But you, and others, say that if we had stayed in the EU our 2021 GDP would be Y(E) and that Y(E) > Y. But the difference is a theoretical gap, the result of a calculation; Y is the actual figure. You cannot experience the loss (Y(E) - Y) because that represents a theoretical state of affairs; it is something that hasn't been achieved. Of course any difference between GDP under Brexit and in the EU will have consequences and to deny that is foolish but we are not talking about that. I am talking about the perceived differences betweentwo states and the impossibility of making a comparison in future years between how we have fared outside the EU and how we would have fared within it. I was indeed an accountant but this has nothing to do with accounting.

In a liberal democracy with a reasonably free press just how do you evade scrutiny? And just to make it clearer: I am not trying to evade criticism - reasonable or unreasonable.

This point has nothing to do with any of the things you mention; it's simply that you cannot miss what you've never had; you cannot understand a state without having experienced it and you cannot - by definition - expereience it. It's very simple.

Obviously you haven't noticed that I'm not doing anything - apart from denying the impossible.; it's others who are doing the focussing.

Precisely.

Goes directly to your point.

Thank you for a totally inappropriate analogy. Obviously you've never heard the term: "you can't miss what you've never had". Trying to bend your analogy might be that according to you Brexit will fail so we would have had 100 but we've only got 90; the extra 10 being a purely theoretical construct. We only have the 90 so we cannot miss the 10 because we never had it in the first place.

Indeed but you can't miss it at the end of the day. "Missing" implies comparison with another state and that state does not exist - it's a "what might have been" - even if you accept the premises as correct. Now you will say this is semantics and in a way you are right, but not completely. Brexit will IMVsimply fade away in the public's imagination; in a few years people won't care; both the UK and EU will have moved on and different issues have come to the fore. I don't particularly welcome this nor am I suggesting that Brexit should not be scrutinised; I'm simply saying it will fade as an issue.

The promises were made before the referendum but the subject of those promises were about the long term after the referendum. How can a long term project fail when we are not much more than six months into it? It may fail ultimately but calling it a failure before it's even off the ground is childish.

Most of what was promised in the video relates to the future so it has not yet happened. How can it therefore have failed?

Putting it another way you're saying we could have had something we've never had. Ever heard the saying: "you'll never miss what you've never had"? What this means is that Brexit will always be painless because we'll never miss what we've never had or stand no chance of getting. ?

I still don't understand why this has not received more attention. One thing that does occur to me: are the negotiations going down the "no deal" route to give grounds for a repudiation of the WA and rewrite the whole set of "sovereignty incompliant" aspects of the existing WA? This possibility is covered in the CBP report mentioned in Chris Grey's blog.

I honestly find this a bit difficult to swallow. Everyone is familiar with the £39 bn that was touted as the cost of leaving for quite some time. But these numbers, although many of which are contingent, are much larger. Why have they only just come to light? To say that they were kept hidden to head off calls for a second referendum is rather weak. You would have expected Labour to have investigated this more and come up with the "true" numbers because they inclined to a second referendum. But they did not. Why not? I'm not saying these numbers are wrong but, nothwithstanding that much of the costs are contingent, why now?

I agree; more than four years and people are still shouting at one another across a chasm.

The poster gave the link to the DT article; it was his link not mine. No one is impartial.

Yes but these are post referendum issues in the main and relate to issues that should probably have been tackled in the WA. The Telegraph report says that to hold the UK accountable for losses on loans for which it itself has overwhelmingly seen no benefit is unfair and the article uses that word. Honesty about trade offs is not the issue; what seems to be the issue is a supine UK negotiating team. However, you have to ask yourself whether this was outright incompetence or whether the contingencies were too remote to have any effect or that there were other undisclosed reasons. Putting it another way; is it not odd that this issue has just reared its head? Are we so incomptent? I'm inclined to believe there is more going on here.

All of this may be true; some may be negotiated away in future years but either way you're saying that the costs of leaving are huge. But you appear to miss a fairly fundamental point: what sort of an organisation is it that, in effect, does not allow you to leave? The immediate analogy is an organisation like the Mafia? Nothwithstanding the cost is this an organisation that you want to be part of? If this is anywhere near true it implies that the UK negotiators were utterly incompetent and the EU were in "punishment mode" neither of which is particularly pleasant to contemplate but many would conclude that it reinforces the reasons for leaving the EU rather thah staying which is what the blog implies.

The reason we were refused entry by De Gaulle in the sixties was that the French exchequer was spending huge amounts on agricultural support on the back of populist agitation. The amounts really were huge and De Gaulle wanted the support mechanisms of the EEC to be nailed down completely. When this was done at the end of the sixties De Gaulle relented in his opposition because firstly the UK would not be able to interfere with the funding arrangements as they had been signed off and secondly the UK represented a new and huge market for French agricultural produce as well as a direct contributor to the EEC coffers. And of course De Gaulle died in 1969 but his opposition was rooted in French interests and, had these arrangements not been concluded, there is no reason to suppose that Pompidou would have been any more accommodative.

Actually on thinking about it the ameliorative effects would only apply to the short term on the assumption that those effects were in the nature of a cycle which would be partially reversed when things became more certain. As you imply most of the calculated losses flow from the decision to leave and are secular not cyclical. I'm sure you're right but I'm talking about the way I see it. This is not sophistry as I'm not trying to convince anyone; it's as I see the situation objectively. Whether you end up with less sovereignty as an indepenent state rather than as a member of the EU is rather like debating how many angels can you fit on the head of a pin.

Osborne signed off this paper: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/524967/hm_treasury_analysis_the_immediate_economic_impact_of_leaving_the_eu_web.pdf Where is the recantation you suggest? In any case the automatic stabilisers would kick in quite apart from any discretionary action the government took but the objective of all this was not to suggest that we could ameliorate the effects of Brexit but to emphasise just how bad it would be if we left the EU.

He didn't say it loud enough.

This is naive. They were presented - admittedly maybe not what they were intended to be - as a scare tactic "look what will happen immediately if you are so stupid as to vote to leave the EU". The point about the assumption that the government would do nothing is sophistry; it was a straight scare tactic. Then why was it not made clear at the time that such measures would be taken to ameliorate any adverse effects? I'm afraid the obvious answer is that it was desired to show that there cannot be any amelioration because the (downward) process is inevitable after leaving the EU. Signs that it could be manageable would take the sharp edge off the remain case and indicate that leaving might not be as bad as advertised. How can you "promise" a future? Control of borders is just that. It does not imply a reduction in immigration. What it does do is to allow extra room to decide what sort of society you want going forward balancing the economic and social factors together. How this ends up remains to be seen but if you have genuine control of your borders you at least have the possibility of providing an acceptable balance between the priorities of economic need and social assimilation whereas with FOM you don't and cannot as a matter of principle. Sovereignty is never absolute; any international agreement compromises sovereignty; and sovereignty is subject to power. Being an independent country does not mean you have unlimited sovereignty; what it means is that you, and no one else, is responsible for these compromises. Repatriating sovereignty does not mean no more "mistakes"; putting it another way what it effectively means is that we have greater choice as to where we make those "mistakes".

Unfortunately the "experts" forecast immediate and dire consequences of a vote to leave the EU, none of which materialised; so the tendency to disregard "experts" is not entirely unreasonable as they appear to work to an agenda, like most. If they can't forecast six months ahead why would you think they can forecast five years? And when you say reality bites what is that "reality"? The fact is that we're at the conjunction of three forces: Brexit; Covid 19 and an incipient recession /financial crash which many, myself included, believe to have been baked in for some years. In addition to that there are secular trends which are likely to undermine growth in the coming years, most of which were identified long before Brexit was even thought of. Now Brexit may get the blame for all this or it may not - I don't think it will - but I think it very unlikely that most will be interested in ascribing blame; they'll be too busy coping.