We Didn't Know

I am tired of this "We didn't know" attitude to Bexit being presented by people who were prominent Leave campaigners during the referendum.  This attitude is incredulous.  It's being used today specifically about the cost of Brexit as a report released said the cost of the "Max Fac" customs solution will likely cost UK businesses £20bn a year.

Google has a wonderful feature that lets you search within a date range, put in two dates and it will show you web pages and news articles that were published during that time.  If you head over there and stick the 1st of Jan 2014 and the 23rd of June 2016 into it and search for "cost of Brexit" there are thousands of articles on the cost, their estimates are wide ranging but many government analyses, not just by UK governments but by other EU governments and by independent bodies all have figures close to what is being reported now.

There's a number of studies by academic institutions which looked deeply into the data surrounding this whole debate, including one by CEP the [Centre for Economic Performance] in the LSE [London School of Economics] called "The Consequences of Brexit for UK trade and living standards" - you can't get any more explicit than that with a title pointing out exactly what is being reported today.  This paper was published in March 2016, 3 months before the referendum and it put the price of Brexit between £26bn and £55bn.

Those were their "conservative estimates" which were in the event of a "good deal" with their extreme being £127bn in the worst case scenario.  Also worthy of note the professor who wrote the report didn't want to be in the EU so you can't even cry bias as reason for ignorance - the author is a eurosceptic not a europhile so you can't claim their report was made to try and sway people towards voting to remain.

This "we didn't know" excuse is complete narcissism, it's being used by people trying to squirm their way out of this mess without admitting they were wrong.  "We didn't know" - you did know, you were told all of this before it happened, you just didn't care and didn't want to hear it and you can't claim you weren't told because we have the receipts.  Your selective memory won't get you out of this one.  Now you have to cough up and pay for what you voted for you're changing your mind because the reality is sinking in.

The worst part is you're doing it in the most infuriatingly obtuse way, rather than just coming right out and saying "I was wrong, this was a mistake" - which if you did it might actually sway the opinions of the people who only voted leave because everyone told them to and turn the tide of public opinion fast enough to stop this before it's too late.  We already know a majority of people now believe this was a mistake and that number is growing and with the disproportionately high number of leave voters among the older generation and the grim reality of a 610k per annum death rate in the UK we also know it would be prudent to say well over half a million people who voted leave are now dead.

Anyone with two brain cells to rub together can see this whole thing is a train wreck, considerable damage has already been done to our nation and our economy and we still have a slim chance of reversing it and that's being suffocated by narcissism and arrogance of the people who just won't stand up and say "This was a mistake" and for once in their life actually be honest with voters.