First let me make it clear that I am a sceptic and my scepticism ranges across the globe and all political parties. However…
We are going to save £18.9bn coming out of Europe. That was the pre-referendum promise. At the Conservative party conference this month the number had been watered down to £1bn a month. Who is going to save it?
Well there was the obvious back-tracking. First, years ago Mr Johnson admitted that the referendum promise of £350m a week was a gross figure not the net amount. As it is, we get £4.4bn back in agricultural subsidies and another £5bn in a rebate in place since 1984. The real total is £9.5bn, a healthy sum for the government to spend.
The flip side is the one we pay for, the consumers. If there is no deal the British Retail Council says our food bills will increase by 20%, approximately £3.1bn. About 80% of our imported food comes from Europe, we can’t replace that instantly from around the world and we’d still be paying tariffs anyway.
Then there is the cost of administering everything that is imported or exported. Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, no less, say the extra cost will be £15bn a year just to fill in all the extra forms. That is likely to be an underestimate as it doesn’t take into account all the new VAT compliance.
As the people importing and exporting this stuff bear the cost of form filling, that £15bn will be passed on to us, the government isn’t picking up the bill, but it will have to pay out a further £470m just to build new border customs and control sites, no estimate yet on the cost of manning them. Basically, the government saves £9.5bn, we pay out £18.1bn. Hmmm.
Of course, the numbers or lack of them is not the only hot air to come from the Tory conference. We have been promised a £160m investment in wind energy to create the 40 gigawatts required to power our kettles etc. Sadly, people in the industry think the money required is closer to £48bn. Not a lot of difference there then.