The most alarming number in the OBR forecast is the 13% drop in forecast business investment, and the Chancellor said it himself: the big problem is uncertainty. The OBR says rather plaintively:
“we asked the Government for ‘a formal statement of policy as regard its desired trade regime…as a basis for our projections’”
but they left us
“little the wiser.”
The Chancellor had a real opportunity today to tackle this uncertainty, which is the basic problem, by setting out the objectives for the Brexit negotiations to keep us with access to the single market and in the customs union. Why did he not do so?