What will happen to the UK economy after Brexit?

The UK will be worse off economically under all Brexit scenarios, a newly published government analysis warns.

The national economy could be up to 3.9% smaller within 15 years under Theresa May’s Brexit deal, compared with staying in the EU, according to figures from the Treasury and a range of other government departments.

But a no-deal Brexit could prove far more damaging, delivering a 9.3% hit - a prediction that may boost the prime minister’s bid to get her Brexit Bill through Parliament.

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“It's official: Brexit will make us poorer than we would be staying in the European Union,” says the BBC’s Simon Jack.

The Treasury estimates do not “put a cash figure on the potential impact on the economy, but independent experts have said that 3.9% of GDP would equate to around £100bn a year by the 2030s”, reports Metro. That would far outweigh the UK’s current contribution to EU budgets, the newspaper adds.

Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Chancellor Philip Hammond insisted that May’s planned Brexit deal combined most of the economic benefits of remaining in the EU with the political benefits of leaving the EU.

However, he did admit that “15 years out, the economy will be very, very slightly smaller as a result of the PM’s proposed deal than it would have been if we remained in the European Union”.

Hammond’s admission is “politically interesting”, as “it confirms that the chancellor’s heart is not really in Brexit at all, and undermines further May’s efforts to sell her lousy deal to MPs”, says The Spectator’s Ross Clark.

May fought back against criticism of that deal during Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday, insisting that the analysis showed the country would be “better off with this deal”.

When pressed on whether the economy would take a hit, the PM’s spokesperson later said: “Do you believe that when elected politicians ask the view of the public in a referendum, those same politicians should just be able to ignore that instruction?”

“In other words, yes, Brexit may make the economy poorer than it would otherwise have been; but voters made a decision that other factors - sovereignty, control of migration - were more important,” says The Guardian’s Heather Stewart.

The Treasury forecasts have been disparaged by hard-line Brexiteers including David Davis, the former Brexit secretary.

“Treasury forecasts in the past have almost never been right and have more often been dramatically wrong,” he said during an address at an event held by the Economists for Free Trade in London today.

Davis pointed out that predictions that the UK economy would contract by 2.1% in the 18 months after the Leave vote were unfounded, and that it had actually grown by 2.8%.

His successor, Dominic Raab, told The Daily Telegraph that the analysis “looks like a rehash of Project Fear”. The Spectator’s Clark agrees, arguing that “the forecasts have have no credibility whatsoever, not given the Treasury’s record”.

But many business chiefs have rubbished such claims.

Rain Newton-Smith, chief economist at the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), told The Guardian: “These forecasts paint a bleak picture over the long term of a no-deal Brexit or a Canada-style deal. It surely puts to bed some of the more far-fetched ideas that a hard-landing Brexit will not seriously hurt the economy.”