YP Letters: What happened to prosperous future Brexit promised?

Chancellor Philip Hammond, who delivered last week's Budget.

LAST year Nigel Adams, MP for Selby, assured us voting to leave the EU meant a “really prosperous future”. Boris Johnson said we would “prosper like never before”.

Last week reality appeared. The Chancellor admitted we face the longest fall in living standards since records began. So, we’re getting poorer – literally like never before. Growth has been revised down for the next five years and in 2021 the economy will be £72bn a year (3.4 per cent) smaller than forecast.

Britain had the world’s fifth largest economy. Mr Adams said we would leapfrog Germany and Japan into third place. We are now sixth, according to Philip Hammond, and expected to be tenth by 2050.

Germany is growing at twice our rate as we leapfrog backwards out of the world’s largest and wealthiest market of 440 million consumers. Most economists think Britain will be permanently poorer.

Households are £800 a year worse off because of inflation caused by the fall in sterling and £3.7bn is being set aside preparing for our exit.

The divorce bill will be well over £40bn. Whitehall is recruiting thousands of lawyers and civil servants. I wonder if there’s a limit to the amount of “prosperity” we can afford? Is no price too high?

Doubtless we’ll get a litany of excuses explaining why Brexit is not to blame. Just another push, one more sacrifice and we’re in Utopia.

The Communists managed to dangle this kind of carrot in Russia for 70 years.

Negotiations are going badly to say the least. The last six YouGov polls show a clear majority now think Brexit is a mistake, but apparently we must impoverish ourselves. It’s the will of the people.

From: Gordon Lawrence. Sheffield.

LISTENING to John McDonnell the other day, I was both amazed and appalled by the indiscriminate way in which the Shadow Chancellor flashed £280bn around as though it were confetti at a Royal Wedding.

Spend, spend and spend – it’s only other people’s money. This is the central idea in Jeremy Corbyn’s economic policy. His rationale? Government investment!

It will all pay for itself, specially with low interest rates, when all the astute investments thought up by Mr Corbyn’s Cabinet generate the income to more than cover costs.

This is pure simplistic nonsense.