Ben Birchall/PA
The Reform UK Party is committing to £140 billion of spending commitments in its manifesto, including massive tax cuts and lofty populist pledges.
Nigel Farage said he wants Reform UK to establish a “bridgehead” in parliament with a view to a full assault in five years’ time, suggesting he could be in No 10 following the next general election.
Plans outlined in the party’s so-called ‘contract’ imply an extra £141 billion a year on tax cuts and other policy pledges, paid for by £156 billion of savings in public spending and an assumption of increased tax revenue from higher economic growth.
But the Institute for Fiscal Studies thinktank said the party’s plans were based on “extremely optimist assumptions” about growth and the sums “do not add up”, meaning the manifesto as a whole was “problematic”.
What’s more, even if the plans were taken at face value they would still land the UK in a hole due to the cost of Brexit, which could see the UK becoming £311 billion worse off by the middle of the next decade.
Economists and analysts at Cambridge Econometrics – commissioned by London’s mayor, Sadiq Khan – have modelled how the UK’s economy would have acted were it still in the European Union.
This was compared to data published by the Office for Budget of Responsibility in March 2023, and forecasts based on those data.
The headline findings from the report include lower growth, lower employment, strong negative impacts on investment, imports falling more than exports, and a growing gap between London and the rest of the UK.
Cambridge Econometrics says it found UK GVA was £2,207 billion in 2023 under current circumstances, and will be £2,771 billion by 2035.
But without Brexit, the organisation states the UK would have had a GVA of £2,347 billion in 2023, and it would have reached £3,082 billion by 2035.
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