Brexit will inflict untold damage on young people – join our campaign to stop it

The most tragic thing is that George Osborne was right. He was the wrong messenger, but he was right. The “blackhole” in the UK’s finances he warned looks set to become a reality. As the price tag of Brexit becomes clearer, and more definite, soft Leavers should think carefully about what they’re really doing: inflicting a more sustained, equally brutal, round of austerity on the next generation. 

Two weeks ago, Mark Carney said that by the end of this year, we would be 2% poorer than we would be had we not voted to leave. Brexit will have cost us £39bn by the end of the year. It is only going to get worse – in fifteen years, the government’s own analysis estimates that our growth will be 5 or 8% less in fifteen years.

The cost of Brexit is enormous. As the number on the price tag of Brexit becomes clearer and more definite, so does what that money could have been spent on.

The NHS is in perennial crisis, the country needs a radical housebuilding programme, and many schools, prisons, train stations and airports are not fit for the twenty-first century.

Brexit will push the safety net to breaking point, and indefinitely delay the investments we need to make for the future. 

There is something, to say the least, distasteful about the provincial, older, and well off enforcing what is, in economic terms alone, an austerity programme on those without capital – primarily the young.

Brexit means the state will be able to afford less, and will have to ask people for more. There was no widespread understanding of this when the vote happened.

In 2016, YouGov found that just 3% of Leavers thought that Brexit would make the economy worse in the long term, and only 5% thought companies would do worse.

But, if we confront them with the draining effect of Brexit on the country’s bank balance, they must re-consider their vote. They must not ask whether or not they personally could afford Brexit, but whether those who are already being failed by the state could afford even less support from society.

When I realised it was obvious Brexit would make the country poorer, I could no longer, in good conscience, support it. How could I – who has received most of the brilliant opportunities this country has had to offer – deprive others of even the most basic ones?

One of those other people is Calum – a fellow co-founder of Our Future, Our Choice! (OFOC!). He grew up in and out of women’s crisis shelters because his mum suffered domestic abuse.

He wasn’t given the support he deserved and needed, and briefly ended up in prison after getting involved with the wrong crowd. If Brexit goes ahead, vulnerable people in the next generation will be failed even more so by the state and society.

This is one of the arguments to take to the ‘waverers’. The people who thought, like me, that Brexit would probably make us richer, as we could trade with the rest of the world, and save money on our EU membership bill.

Well, it turns out that we’re still going to be paying our membership bill for the foreseeable future, and that a trade deal with China and America will make us 0.4% richer over 15 years – whilst leaving the EU will make us 5 or 8% poorer.

The choice becomes continuing along an ideological project, whereby we cut back support for simply cannot afford to have any less, or stopping it altogether.

This is why I am optimistic. There are, of course, Brextremists – ranging from the ideologues to the xenophobes.

But comfortably enough of the Leave vote are open to being persuaded if they can be convinced that Brexit is, and will continue, harming the economy, and the quality of public services in society.

This is quite an easy job for us to do because Brexit already is harming the economy and state of public services. The task now is just to campaign, to get this message out there, to mobilise like never before.

This is why, this week, I have helped set up OFOC!, a group of young people who want to stop Brexit democratically. I hope if you’re young you join our movement. I hope if you’re old you join another campaign, to take this argument, along with several others, to the country – to fight for our future! 

Will Dry is co-president of Our Future, Our Choice! He tweets here.