speculating with brexit numbers, because somebody needs to

Another week or more and I still haven't seen anything directly useful from the Brexit planning, so I thought I'd put together my own draft tables.

There's been various high level figures bandied about, but I thought I'd produce something which showed some sort of run rate of payments.

These are my basic planning assumptions:

• The net contribution from UK to EU per annum is around £8.5bn after the rebates etc.
• There will be an ongoing commitment to the EU post Brexit, particularly if we expect to do something relevant around tariffs.
• There's an awkward pension gap which UK will be obliged to pay. I'm fairly appalled by this, especially paying ongoing pensions to the original UK representatives who saw their job to undermine the EU, and the eurocrats rushing to get Belgian citizenship, but it will still need to be covered.
• There will be some kind of projects charge for things that UK has already inescapably committed
• There will be some kind of 'pain of exit' charge. I have called it the Exit Fee - needed so that the EU can show other members that it is better to stay in. This could, in other ways be considered a bribe or a revenge factor.

Rather than produce one table, I've produced three, to get a 'snake in the tunnel' approach. A `UK aggressive' (minimum), a 'Typical' and an 'EU Aggressive' (maximum). The figures for the three come out as follows:


It gives a range of all-in costs of between €109bn and €174bn.

I can make the €108bn look like €83.4bn fairly easily by removing the pre Brexit run-rate of payments. It is still a long way north of the tabloid €34bn being speculated.

It is fairly easy to discredit the hypothesised €34bn because it is only around 4 years of the €8.5bn run-rate.

Here's the same table in more detail. Come to think of it, the raggeldy opposition should probably have done something like this, instead of being broken and ineffectual.

Of course my 15 minutes of spreadsheeting is unfinessed. There's probably more options to chip away at the numbers. I show payments staggered over a five-year period. This could also be tweaked as well as the start point could be re-phased.

Politically this range of options provides more ways to explain things as well as subtly continuing payments beyond the end of Brexit. Of course they are under a new guise and it is in return for the relevant tariffs to be easily agreed.

Doing a simple exercise like this at least begins to illustrate parameters and positioning.

There's a pretty hefty DExEU team now in place.

Roll on some observable action and, most importantly, outcomes.