Pro-EU diehards in Britain suffered fresh embarrassment on June 12th as unemployment fell to a 43-year low, despite high-profile official warnings that a Brexit vote would push it up by 500,000.
Claims that a Leave vote would have an immediate impact on jobs were a centrepiece of the Remain campaign’s ‘Project Fear‘ strategy, and given all the Government backing which former Prime Minister David Cameron could muster.
George Osborne, the former Chancellor of the Exchequer and Remain campaign “Scaremonger-General“, had his officials produce a report which promised that, “A vote to leave would represent an immediate and profound shock to [Britain’s] economy. That shock would push our economy into a recession and lead to an increase in unemployment of around 500,000.”
In fact, the British economy has continued to grow while unemployment has fallen, with the latest Office for National Statistics (ONS) figures showing a 43-year low of 1.49 million after a drop of 64,000 in the three months to May 2017.
Richard Tice, a businessman and co-chairman of the Leave.EU and Leave Means Leave campaigns, told Breitbart London that the news was “another nail slammed in the coffin of Project Fear”, asking: “When will Osborne, HM Treasury and other ‘experts’ apologise, rather than continue to whinge from the sidelines?”
Colleague John Longworth, a former Director-General of the British Chambers of Commerce, agreed that the figures had “once again debunked the outrageous Project Fear campaign run by George Osborne and the Treasury”.
He added that there was reason to be hopeful for even better figures after Brexit, with tens of thousands of under-25s “pushed out of training and jobs by the unlimited supply of cheap olabour from the EU” enjoying better prospects outside the Single Market and its associated Free Movement regime.
Pre-referendum Brexit warnings have proved to be unreliable more or less across the board, not only for the Treasury but for national and global institutions such as the Bank of England and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as well.
One of the most pessimistic players, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), was recently forced to admit that, “The quality of life [in Britain after Brexit] will probably remain to a very great extent as it is today, because the values will remain the same”, despite having claimed that, “A decision to exit would result in … substantial negative consequences for the UK, the EU and the rest of the world” prior to the referendum.
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