George Osborne urged MPs to work across parties to force Theresa May into a ‘softer’ Brexit (file picture)
George Osborne today boasted that the government’s leaked Brexit impact assessments vindicated his Project Fear campaign.
The former Chancellor said the latest draft forecasts produced by Whitehall – which found the UK would be worse off whatever deal is struck with the EU – were ‘very similar’ to those produced by the Treasury when he was in charge.
Mr Osborne also urged MPs to work across parties to force Theresa May into a ‘softer’ Brexit.
But while he insisted leaving the bloc was a mistake, he said he did not believe the referendum decision could be reversed.
The intervention, in an interview with BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, comes amid a major row over the leaked assessments.
The PM and ministers have disowned the study, saying it was incomplete as it did not consider the kind of bespoke Brexit deal the UK is seeking.
On BBC Radio 4’s Today programme he said leaked analysis of the economic impact of Brexit should force a change in the Tory approach.
The analysis, obtained by website Buzzfeed, suggested that, even with a comprehensive EU trade deal, UK growth would be 5 per cent lower over the next 15 years, rising to an 8 per cent hit if Britain left without a deal.
Mr Osborne dodged questions over whether he agreed with former PM David Cameron, who recently admitted that Brexit vote’s impact had not been as bad as thought.
And the ex-minister – who now edits the Evening Standard – risked Eurosceptic wrath by suggesting the Treasury’s forecasts during the referendum battle had been proved right.
Those estimates were widely condemned as part of the Project Fear campaign to avoid a Brexit vote.
But Mr Osborne said of the new assessments: ‘They are very similar to the figures produced by the Treasury before the referendum.
‘You now have a government that is committed to Brexit producing similar forecasts to a government that was against it.’
Mr Osborne added: ‘We now face a series of choices about the kind of Brexit we want and we have a much clearer idea of the consequences.’
‘We should look clearly at the costs and benefits of, for example, leaving the customs union and doing less trade with Europe versus what we might gain from doing a trade deal with America.
Theresa May and husband Philip posed for a picture inside the Forbidden City in Beijing today
David Cameron was caught on camera at the Davos summit last week admitting that Brexit had not been as bad as feared so far
‘At the moment the sums don’t stack up for that kind of decision.’
Efta members Norway, Switzerland, Iceland and Liechtenstein have very close relations with the EU and joining it would be viewed as a betrayal by Brexiteers.
But Mr Osborne said: ‘These are the choices we face and if we are saying we want out of all of our economic arrangements with our European neighbours then we are embarking on a risky economic course according to the figures that the Government themselves have produced.’
He said an increasing number of Tory MPs were now considering whether the UK should be in the European Free Trade Association, like Norway and Switzerland, and questioned whether Mrs May would be able to get a majority for leaving the customs union in Parliament.
‘If you want to put a better argument to the country than the one Jeremy Corbyn is putting, which is in my view a risky economic proposition, then you have got to put a sound economic plan forward,’ he said.
‘You can’t put, yourself, to the country a risky economic proposition.’
Mr Osborne, who was sacked as chancellor by Mrs May, has described her as a ‘dead woman walking’ and repeatedly used the pages of his London Evening Standard newspaper to criticise her Brexit plans.
With Mrs May on a trade mission to China with her position under pressure at home, Mr Osborne said the Tory party had to offer ‘a big plan for the future’.
He said: ‘The Conservative Party, which I have worked very hard over my lifetime to put back in a position where it could be the Government, must offer to the country a big plan for the future, big ideas, big vision, whether it’s transforming schools in the north of England, or a plan to engage with the rest of the world like China, or indeed a form of Brexit which is not as economically damaging as some of the forms being proposed.
‘I would humbly suggest that’s what is required.’