SCOTLAND’S economy will lose £4.5 billion if the UK votes to leave the EU, Chancellor George Osborne claimed as he campaigned in the Borders.
Brexit, he said, would result in such a “profound economic shock” that at least 43,000 Scots would lose their jobs.
Tom Harris, the former Labour MP in charge of the Scottish Vote Leave campaign said the Chancellor was “talking down Scotland”.
The Leave campaign have been keen to talk about immigration rather than the economy in the campaign – polling and focus groups show it is their strongest argument in winning voters round to backing Brexit.
Yesterday, Osborne visited the Borders to once again try and shift the debate back on to the state of the country’s finances in the event of a vote to leave on June 23.
The Chancellor said Scotland’s £8.4bn in exports to the EU in 2014 were almost half of the country’s total exports. Leaving Europe will, he said, put at risk not just those those exports, but the 153 investment projects in Scotland which the EU has invested in over the last five years.
“Every credible independent voice agrees that if the UK votes to leave the EU there would be a profound economic shock that would hurt people’s jobs, livelihoods and living standards in Scotland.
“Trade exports to the EU have created jobs in Scotland and withdrawing from the single market would have a huge impact on the economy here. It is simply not a price worth paying. I urge everyone to vote to remain in the EU on June 23.”
Osborne also unveiled new analysis suggesting unemployment in Scotland will rise by 43,000, with youth unemployment increasing by 6,000, and a fall in the average house price of £22,000 by 2018.
Harris criticised the Chancellor’s “Project Fear” tactics: “The people of Scotland won’t take kindly to the Tory austerity chancellor coming to Scotland in a desperate attempt to scare voters into backing remain. Osborne and Cameron know the only jobs under threat from leaving the EU are their own.
The former Labour MP for Glasgow South said: “It’s about time the chancellor stopped talking down Scotland and the UK’s economy.”
It was something of a Scottish day on the Remain campaign yesterday. As Nicola Sturgeon headed south for the ITV debate, Gordon Brown and Neil Kinnock were in Glasgow addressing Labour activists.
Campaigning in Northern Ireland, former Prime Ministers Tony Blair and John Major warned that Brexit would lead to a new referendum on Scottish independence.
“The plain, uncomfortable truth is that the unity of the UK itself is on the ballot paper in two weeks’ time,” Major said. “There is a serious risk of a new referendum, not immediately perhaps, but eventually.”
The two former prime ministers, who both played key roles in the Northern Ireland peace process made a symbolic joint appearance in Derry, where they warned that the vote could also risk the region’s stability.
Major said: “I believe it would be an historic mistake to do anything that has any risk of destabilising the complicated and multi-layered constitutional settlement that underpins stability in Northern Ireland.”
Northern Ireland was “poised on carefully constructed foundations,” said Blair. “And so we are naturally concerned at the prospect of anything that could put those foundations at risk.”
Nigel Dodds, deputy leader of the Democratic Unionist Party, told the BBC’s Daily Politics programme the two men were scaremongering: “Of all the claims that have been made about the threats to the UK and the constituent parts of the UK if we were to leave the EU, I find this claim that Northern Ireland’s political stability is going to be undermined one of the most depressing and disappointing.”
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