Why should anybody trust George Osborne’s Brexit scare figures?
Suzanne Moore
Monday 18 April 2016 12.10 BST
The chancellor has proved himself incapable of predicting anything accurately. There’s no reason to believe his Brexit forecasts are any more trustworthy

George Osborne claims families will be worse off by £4,300 a year in the event of Brexit. Photograph: Michael Reynolds/EPA
What happens the day after we vote Brexit? The first year? Anything? Nothing? Will anyone actually notice? These are the sort of questions I would like answered instead of being bombarded with fantasy scenarios. George Osborne has said that families will be £4,300 a year worse off if we leave Europe. Will I lose £4,300 from my income then in that first year? That’s a lot of money. No, I won’t. Nor will you. This is a figure conjured out of a Treasury report, forecasting a slowing down of the economy by 6% over a very large period of time. It is designed, as all electioneering now seems to be, to appeal to us purely on base self-interest: “I will vote for something only if there is financial reward in it for me personally.”
The reduction of the EU referendum to facts and figures – and largely figures that are not facts at all, but forecasts made by those who have got it significantly wrong in the past – is but one way this debate is a turn-off. A turn-off manifests itself in the form of turnout so it matters. It also reduces every argument about democracy to one about the economy, thus shutting down any space for alternative visions.
Either this is a huge moment for our country, our identity, our place in the world, or it is about which bunch of managers is more efficient. So we have two elites simply batting imaginary figures at each other over different kinds of meltdown, one financial, the other triggered by migration.
More:
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/apr/18/george-osborne-brexit-scare-figures