Andrew Neil has been arguing with people on twitter over this for a while now, the report doesn't mention anything about in the event of triggering article 50, just in the event of a leave vote.
Cameron inferred he would trigger article 50 the day after a leave vote but no one really believed him, there was no planning for that whatsoever and vote leave said throughout the whole campaign there would be a period of preparation first.
We can't infer anything from today's data about the long term effects of brexit, what we can infer though it that the treasury report, and the vast majority of the short term predictions made before the referendum where complete and utter bollocks.
Honestly, you're talking such rubbish it's infuriating. I work in a company that was responsible for some of the Brexit forecasts that government quoted (I mean, I wasn't involved, I'm a recent hire, but you get the picture). If we get these things wrong, or are scaremongering, then we don't get hired again.
What actually happened after the Brexit vote was: nothing. No laws were changed. No economic regulations were changed. No hiring regulations were changed. No tariffs were introduced. No single markets were left. No new monetary restrictions or expansions occurred.
Nothing changed.
What's more, until two years after Article 50,
none of those things will change. For, at a minimum, if May triggered Article 50 tomorrow, we would still be, for the next two years: a member of the single market, not face tariffs on our goods abroad, not see any changes in hiring regulation to replace EU laws, no changes in economic regulation to replace EU directives. Nothing. No change. Why? Because for at least the next two years, we are still members of the European Union. So why would the economy be any different now to what it was before the vote?
It's the same economy.
Until we actually do leave, all that has changed is expectations. Forecasts. The only influence that the vote could *possibly* have had on economic performance *now* is people changing their investment decisions or whatever because the payoff period extends more than two years into the future.
So you're saying "leaving clearly hasn't been bad and everyone who said so was wrong"? Well, no shit Sherlock. We've not actually left. What the Treasury report comments on is
the impact of leaving the European Union. We've not left yet.
And Andrew Neil is wrong. Let me quote from the report, here:
This paper focuses on the immediate economi
c impact of a vote to leave and the two
years that follow.
It is implicit from this sentence that the paper thinks Article 50 would be triggered after the vote - otherwise, it wouldn't say "the two years that follow", it'd say "the following years". In our real timeline right now, it'll be almost three years between the vote and Britain leaving if May triggers Article 50 in March.
That was just the introduction. Here it is again:
he size of the transition
effect is linked to the estimate of leavin
g the Single Market and defaulting to WTO
membership.
In the severe shock scenario, the
analysis shows that after two years
the level of GDP would be 6% lower,
the number of people unemployed would
rise by around 800,000, sterling would depr
eciate by 15% and CPI inflation would
increase by 2.7 percentage points after a year.
and again:
The long-term document did not consi
der the immediate economic shock of a
vote to leave the EU. This document looks
at the immediate effect from the point of a
decision to two years later, as this is the period in which to negotiate a withdrawal
agreement to leave the EU as
set out in the Treaties.
Frankly, I'm really struggling not to lose patience. You are wrong. There is no way around it. You are simply wrong, you do not understand what you are talking about, and you persist in the face of your ignorance.
