EU REFERENDUM : VAROUFAKIS SHOOTS BLAIR'S FOX.

This morning on the 'Andrew Marr' show BBC1, we were graced by the presence of one Tony Blair, well, Anthony Charles Lynton Blair actually; the 'Tony' was only ever an attempt to demonstrate that he was a 'man of the people', which he never was.

Anyway, Blair was his usual disingenuous self, not answering questions and simply repeating a mantra about the horrific economic consequences should the UK vote to leave the EU. In his usual style, Blair showed apparent absolute certainty in his views, saying that everyone knew that leaving the EU would have dire consequences, though without providing any evidence. He also said, bizarrely, that the bulk of immigration into the UK was from non-EU countries, a fact which is clearly disproved by the statistics published by the ONS only a couple of days ago. Clearly, Blair believes the old idea that if you say something often enough and with enough apparent authority, people will believe it to be true; sadly, it is often the case and politicians rely on this gullibility of the electorate time after time.

 His comments came after Liam Fox, a dedicated 'Brexiteer' had concentrated his remarks on the issues of sovereignty and immigration and, much more interestingly, were sandwiched between the comments of a genuine economist, Yanis Varoufakis. The last named is a pro-European who believes that the UK should stay within the EU, but he utterly rejects the economic projections put out by the 'Remain' campaign. As an economist, his stance is that no one can possibly know what the consequences of an exit would be as there is no previous experience from which to develop a model, so all of the projections are just as likely to be wrong as right. In fact, they are meaningless and should be ignored.

The 'Remain' campaign has concentrated its fire on their certainty that voting to leave the EU would be catastrophic for the UK and have backed up their claims with reports from a number of supposedly independent and respected economic forecasting bodies, such as the Bank of England, the IMF, the Treasury and the IFS. All of these bodies use the same basic forecasting models and make the same assumptions about a possible future, and all have been wrong many times in the past. The truth is that most economic forecasting is a matter of politics rather than of economics and can be used to support whatever outcome is required. Varoufakis knows this and admits it, Blair also knows it, but will happily lie through his teeth about it.

Leaving the EU will have consequences but so will staying in. Anyone who wants to live in a United States of Europe governed from Brussels should certainly vote to 'Remain'; anyone who wants to live in a free and independent United Kingdom must VOTE LEAVE.