The Guardian view on the economics of Brexit: running wild risks is not British | Editorial

Economists are agreed, as they never were on the euro, that quitting the EU will make Britain poorer. How strange, in an economically conservative country, that many are refusing to listen

The economic debate in British general elections has become a ritual. The manifestos are published, the Institute for Fiscal Studies pores over them and explains how, say, Conservative tax plans imply forgoing revenues of 10bn or so, or how Labour pledges on public services would require spending an extra 10bn or so instead. Each side declares a "black hole" in the finances of the other, and spends the rest of the campaign alleging that the other side has a secret plan to fill the gap with either stealthy tax rises, or the closure of NHS wards.

It is never a particularly edifying argument, but it bears testament to the broad mainstream consensus about how to make Britain prosper. For the numbers involved in the tax-and-spending squabble are typically of the order of a percentage or two of government spending, or a fraction of a percent of national income. For economic radicals, this makes elections a pathetically narrow choice. For progressives, the extreme deference that has to be shown to the bean-counters' concerns about sums which could easily get lost in the rounding of the public accounts is frustrating. British democrats on all sides, however, have learned to live with it, accepting that elections have to be fought this way, given the extreme caution of most British voters in matters financial.

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