The Billion Pound Lie

We are hearing from our government that an extension to Brexit will cost the UK taxpayer one billion pounds a month. Is this true? (hint, look at the title)

So, first off, where does this figure come from?

It appears that this was originally something that a Downing Street Spokesperson said.

James Grove, political editor of the Daily Mail (oh, what a surprise) tweeted on the 3rd of September 2019:

No 10 says rebel efforts to delay Brexit will cost the taxpayer ‘roughly £1 billion a month’ in additional EU budget contributions if successful.’

Now, you might want to stop me at this point and bring the Brexit Bus to my attention, which claimed we paid £350million a week to the EU (times by 52, divide by 12 to get a rough monthly figure) which means that Boris had already claimed we were giving the EU about £1.5billion a month, so we are saving money already.

But even then, £1billion a month is huge. Have they checked their maths?

After arch comedian and Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab quoted this figure in an interview, the BBC did a Fact Check on this figure and they discovered:

Reality Check verdict: Mr Raab is right that staying in the EU would cost £1bn a month in budget payments. But his figure excludes any money the government gets back from the EU in grants for things like regional development or supporting farmers. When you factor these in, the figure comes down to about £744m a month.’

Well, what is £256million a month between friends. If the government would like to round it up to £1billion and pop the rest in my bank account, I am sure that I could make this dissapear.

But £744million is a huge amount.

Yes, it is. But bear with me while I look at our Divorce Bill with the EU. It will all make sense, I promise.

When we enacted Article 50, to leave the EU, it was calculated that we would have a ‘divorce bill’ of about £39billion. This is money that we owe the EU to cover our financial committments. It should have come due when we were due to leave.

There is some argument between the Hard Right and reasonable people over whether we would actually have to pay this bill.

Now let’s stop being silly and consider what we are actually saying by threatening to not pay our bills.

We are saying that the United Kingdom would reneg on it’s legally agreed commitments, rather than pay up. What would that do to the UKs credit rating? We have already dropped from AAA to AA with a negative outlook (in other words we are at risk of dropping further). Not paying our bills will have the same effect on the country as not paying our bills at home would have on us.

But who cares about that?

Well, you should. Standard and Poor produce these ratings for countries so that investors can see how good a country is to invest in. It helps world banks to see if a country is acceptable to lend money to. It helps countries to work out what sort of trading relationship they might have with another country.

Look at it this way, if we don’t pay we can expect Europe’s Baliffs to come knocking on our door.

‘Nice Country you’ve got here. We need to come in and start working out what we are going to take away in order to cover your debt.’

And don’t forget, if we don’t pay we will accrue interest on our debt, and who knows what the rate will be.

‘Hi, this is PayDayLendingBastard.com. How can I help you?’
‘Yes, I’m looking to borrow some money to tide me over until my fantasy country appears.’
‘OK, well, late me take a few details, can I take your name?’
‘Yes, it is Boris Johnson’.
‘And do you have a job, Boris?’
‘Yes, I am Prime Minister.’
‘And how much are you looking to borrow?’
‘£33billion.’
‘OK, well your credit rating is plummeting, but we may still be able to help. Let me talk to my manager.’
Muzak on the telephone.
‘Hello Boris, my manager says we can offer you the full amount you need, but we would need to take London, Cardiff, Edinburgh and Belfast as security. And your interest rate would be 1266% APR. Remember, your Country may be at risk if you do not keep up repayments on your loan. Do you want to go ahead with that?’
‘But the taxpayer would suffer so much! Nah, only joking. Can a take out the loan in the name of H M Government please…’

We risk becoming like a third world nation if we don’t pay our bills. We have already fallen from 5th richest to 6th richest country in the world since the Brexit vote. Lots of our biggest companies have moved their headquarters overseas to Paris and Frankfurt, and five minutes Googling will give you a frightening list. We have to pay our debts or we will cause a massive shock to our economy.

And before you get too hung up on the £744million a month bill, don’t forget that the EU currently gives grants and funding to British Business totalling about £192million a month. That is not even looked at in these figures.

But why do we need to keep paying £1billion to the EU every month if we delay Brexit?

We need to understand what this money is doing when we pay it to the EU. It is not wasted money, it goes towards paying our EU membership, and also our Brexit Bill.

The Office for Budget Responsibility say that the delay in Brexit (March to October) means that the current bill would be about £33bn because the UK’s continuing membership of the EU means that some of those payments have been made as normal budget contributions instead of as part of the Brexit Bill.

But doesn’t that mean this figure is completely irrelevent, as the longer we take to leave the EU, the less we will owe?

Thank you, yes, that is exactly what this means. Boris will keep repeating it, because not everyone is an economist and not everyone has taken the time to find out the full facts. Also, if he decided not to pay the EU divorce bill, then obviously leaving in October means less money to the EU than if we leave in January. But as we have seen, this is silly.

The claim that we will be giving £1billion a month to the EU if we don’t leave on October the 31st is a bit of a relief. I notice that Boris isn’t saying that we need to leave on the 31st October and pay the EU £33billion in one hit!

The reality is that, apart from inflating or rounding figures, Boris is not lying (which makes a change), he’s just not telling the whole story. A sin of ommission perhaps.

And don’t even start on the economic horror that is a No Deal Brexit. We stand to lose more than £1billion a month if we leave without a deal… and we will still have to pay the divorce bill. But that is a story for another day.

Project Fear – why I am accused of it

In which your host looses his rag with people who are not paying attention.

You take the high road, and I’ll take the low road

So, a bit of history first.  Always good to get that out of the way.

Project Fear, apart from sounding like an amazing new ride at [insert name of favourite theme part], sounds like something that has been batted around by people for as long as man has undertaken political debate with man.

Nope.  It may surprise you to know that Rob Shorthouse, communications director for Better Together (a pro keep Scotland in the UK group), is attributed as having coined the phrase in 2014, during the Scottish Independence Referendum.  Now, this is where it gets a bit odd, so bear with me.  Better Together was being accused of scaremongering in order to get people to vote to remain part of the UK, by a group that wanted an independent Scotland called, simply, Yes Scotland.  Rob suggested, in jest, that it might be a handy phrase Yes Scotland could use instead of ‘scaremongering’.  I am sure he did not expect anyone to take the suggestion literally.

But those Scots, they are a canny lot, and they spotted an opportunity.  Alex Salmond, then leader of the SNP (Scottish Nationalist Party) used it to taunt Alistair Darling (Labour, pro Union) during a televised debate.

In 2016 during the EU Referendum Campaign the term was re-introduced by non other than Boris Johnson!  He claimed that the pro-EU campaign were agents of ‘Project Fear’ trying to ‘spook’ the electorate (he also claimed that we would get £350 million a week back to give to the NHS!  He also said he wouldn’t use the archaic instrument of proroguing parliament.  Oh, Boris!).  So BoJo The First was responsible for the new use of the term to refer to anyone who opposed his view on leaving Europe.

But wait, BoJo was not the only one to use it during the campaign, I hear you cry.  Go on then, you are right of course.  John McDonnell, Labour Shadow Chancellor said:

“The EU referendum is about our future relationship with Europe, not who is the next leader of the Tory Party … the Labour leadership will not go anywhere near the Tories’ ‘project fear’ campaign on both sides of the debate. But instead we will continue to set out the positive case to ‘Remain and Reform’ the EU to create ‘Another Europe’”

Alistair Darling, still campaigning to stay put said:

“Project Fear? In fact, it is a reality check. The kind anyone would take before making such an enormous decision in their lives.”

David Cameron, he who called the Referendum as Conservative Prime Minister said:

“The only project I’m interested in is Project Fact. Project Fact is about saying: ‘Stay in and you know what you’ll get.'”

So What is Project Fear?

Looking at the main use of the term, it would appear that anyone who wishes to warn others of the potential impact of a decision is now just spouting ‘Project Fear’. 

It seems unfortunate that the term has now become so widely used by Pro Leave factions that it has become a real thorn in the side of anyone who disagrees with their point of view.  It is interesting to note that it does appear to mainly be used as a way of deflecting the recipient of the information from having to come up with a coherent anti argument.  It is almost as prevalent on Twitter and Facebook as ‘You lost, get over it’ and the term ‘remoaners’ for anyone who doesn’t agree with the Leave view point.

When I was a kid they used to stick their fingers in their ears, close their eyes and hum loudly.  I think I prefer that on Twitter and Facebook as I won’t be able to see or hear them.

Quick, copyright an emoji that does that – you’ll make a fortune.

In current times, anyone who does not support the exiting of the EU by the UK, anyone who does support it but does not think No Deal is a viable option, anyone who has the temerity to stick there hand up and call the Government to account is said to be spreading ‘Project Fear’.

Heaven help you if you want to defend democracy!

But you are just trying to frighten people, it is Project Fear

I get people telling me this almost every time I try to explain facts and figures that show that a No Deal Brexit is not a safe option for us as a nation.

Following on from my rambling walk over the stats on medication, I saw someone say that they had a cousin who worked in the NHS and there were no such worries.  Well blow me!  Hundreds of facts and figures gleaned from reading government reports, professional journals and looking at the NHS Shortage list which is growing rapidly (a list of medications that the NHS is now allowed to pay way over the odds for because of short supply), and all I actually needed to do was ask this ladies cousin.  They may be a receptionist, a nurse, a porter, maybe even a consultant in the NHS, we aren’t told.  Hell, they could even be a Director of one of the Trusts.  I some how doubt it.

So, my main reason for today’s topic is that I am sick to death of accusations from people that I am just trying to frighten people.  The main reason I include so many quotes from documents and from the Governments own sources is to show that I am not making stuff up.  If you don’t believe what I say, go and do some reading online.  It is all there.  I don’t have a magic knowledge tree that tells me what to say.  I form opinions by going off and doing the reading.

Some of the articles I read have quotes in them that seem totally at odds with the main article, suggesting that the government does not think we should worry.  I don’t dismiss these, I include them.  And I also look in to them.  I then decide, taking a balanced view, whether I think there is a trend there or not, and on balance I write what I see.

Am I biased?  Yes, everyone is.  You hear about people saying they are being impartial.  I just ask them whose side they are being impartial on though.  We all have our own opinions.  They are formed from our life experiences and what we see and hear and read.

I am a proud European.  Born and bred in Europe, in Rugby in Warwickshire in the UK in fact.  Even though we weren’t part of the EC when I was born, we were still part of Europe.  That won’t change if we leave the EU either.  Might surprise a few people.  Even that Great British ingenuity will not help.  Doesn’t matter how many Welshmen we get to try to tow the country towards Florida!

I am also a bit of a Globalist.  By that I mean that I see global political affiliation as being a good thing.  The more countries join together to work together, the less likely there will be a war and the more likely we are to solve some of the real pressing issues of our time such as Starvation, Homelessness, Disease and Climate Change.

So yes, I am pro remain, and no I am not a card carrying member of Project Fear.

You can find out more about Project Fear by watching this new 10 part TV Series:

Government is secretly being run by aliens whose aim is to reintroduce carnivorous dinosaurs to Britain by vaccinating children with dinosaur DNA.  Only one man knows and can stop them.  But can he and his handsome assistant stop Project Fear alone?  Rated 18 for bad language and nudity.  Contains scenes of trolling!  Definitely contains nuts.

TTFN