I do not take much notice of all of the scaremongering about Brexit that comes from Downing Street, Holyrood, Paris and Brussels, or I would be spending a lot of my life behind the settee. You do not have to love the UK as much as I do to see that the arguments made by “Remain”—also known as “Project Fear”—are weak. The sensible thing to do, based on an assessment of the strength and resilience of the UK economy, is to reject most of the arguments against Brexit on account of the pessimism built into them.
As part of this, we should reject the Cabinet Office’s findings, which are relentlessly pessimistic. They make no allowance at all for the strength of the UK economy—or its global importance. The report gives no indication that in the eventuality of Brexit, the EU would adopt rational self-interest to protect its trade with the UK, its largest trade partner, which is worth £290bn a year. This trade is particularly important to Germany, the EU’s chief paymaster, and yet the government talks as if the EU will treat the UK like Norway, a much smaller economy.