A new report by The UK in a Changing Europe is getting a lot of play on the BBC and the Remain media this morning. Goes without saying that the authors are EU-funded sockpuppets. The report is continuity Project Fear, predicting “legal morass and economic disaster” in the event of a no-deal Brexit. What you won’t read in the broadsheet write-ups is its admission that its own analysis is pure speculation and not based on fact. In their own words: “The analysis that follows is necessarily speculative… [there are] no facts about the future… [the analysis] requires a significant amount of speculation”. Wait, it gets worse…

The report uses the above table in its economic section to substantiate its claims. The table is ripped off from the discredited Treasury analysis from the referendum. The report itself admits these numbers are fantasy: “Of course, it turned out the Treasury was crying wolf over the short-term impact of a vote to leave”. Why is a report using debunked figures being taken seriously?

Change Britain point out that the report makes a number of misleading and exaggerated claims. It attempts to scaremonger about the impact of no deal on aviation, ignoring the fact that the EU is under an obligation to extend the SES to non-member states. Then there is the Euratom red herring. The report says “a no deal Brexit may mean that the UK has no established safety procedures and systems for the operation of nuclear power plants”. Of course the government is introducing a Nuclear Safeguards Bill to deal with withdrawal from Euratom.

As Gisela Stuart notes, the report “takes a misleadingly pessimistic view… and fails to acknowledge measures which will allow for continuity in the event of no deal”. We’ve been here before, this is the same old stale gloom rehashed…