Having lost his seat at the last election, former MP Ben Gummer is constantly wheeled out by the BBC and other liberal news outlets as a “mainstream” Tory. That is to say that – unlike most Tory members - he wants to stay in the EU. He then trots out the most monstrous canards claiming them as facts and, naturally, goes unchallenged.
On Radio 4 the other day, Gummer stated the FACT ( i.e. something that has happened) that UK economic growth had been reduced by 1.5% by the Brexit vote. Since there is no laboratory where one British economy trundles along with a vote for Brexit and another with a vote against, Gummer cannot prove that claim. It is not a fact. It is an opinion.
Gummer might claim that UK economic growth is less than had been forecast two years ago. But has he checked economic growth vs forecasts in the EU or US or China? Britain has a global economy and what happens here makes us, in many ways, a cork on that wave. Moreover those making forecasts back in 2016 had no idea of what the Bank of England would do with base rates or what our useless chancellor would do to "fine tune" the economy.
It may be that the Brexit vote has reduced economic growth although we should note that UK growth is far greater than growth in the Eurozone. So it is perfectly possible that the Brexit vote has not made an impact. After all, while folks like Ben Gummer predicted 600,000 job losses as a result of a vote for Brexit we have actually seen a net 700,000 job gains since June 23 2016. The bottom line is that we do not know for certain, the impact of that vote on UK economic growth.
But Gummer states it as a FACT and then makes all sorts of claims about lower Government tax receipts as a result of that FACT. But it is only an opinion. Not that the BBC and his fellow believers in the Great EU Project, who dominate the media, bother to challenge him on this matter.