The Treasury is to conduct a new ‘Project Fear-style’ analysis of Andy Burnham‘s planned Brexit betrayal.
Whitehall sources said Treasury officials will be asked to set out the potential economic benefits of a range of options for Britain’s future relations with the European Union.
One insider said the move was designed to ‘inform the debate’ over how far to go in unpicking Brexit.
But the revelation triggered warnings that Labour is planning to revive the Project Fear tactics of the referendum campaign in a bid to bounce the country back into the EU.
Former Tory leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith said the initiative ‘sounds like Project Fear all over again’. He told the Daily Mail: ‘There is no limit to Burnham’s ambitions when he talks of getting closer to the EU.
‘All the nonsense about the UK’s economic performance is without evidence. We have outgrown the EU.’
Shadow Chancellor Andrew Griffith also warned the Treasury against ‘giving us Project Fear in reverse’.
In the run-up to the 2016 vote, the Treasury produced an ‘analysis’ claiming that Britain would suffer a ‘profound shock’ if it voted to leave the EU.
Andy Burnham is pushing for a fresh debate about Britain’s relationship with the European Union, arguing closer ties could boost economic growth
Burnham meets with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on the sidelines of the 81st United Nations General Assembly on September 22, 2026
It said the UK would be plunged into a deep recession, with house prices falling by up to 18 per cent and unemployment jumping by up to 820,000.
A review of the predictions by investment platform AJ Bell this year found the Treasury had been right to forecast a fall in the value of the pound, but added: ‘Neither of the Treasury’s short-term “shock” or “severe shock” scenarios proved totally accurate.’
Mr Burnham is pushing to reopen the Brexit debate, despite saying in May that it was ‘the last thing we should do right now’.
He will use a UK-EU summit in Brussels this month to launch a ‘conversation’.
The PM claimed this week that a new food and farming deal would boost the UK’s GDP by 0.4 per cent over time – equal to £12billion a year. But the Treasury has refused to publish the analysis on which the figure is based.
It came as the Bank of England governor also claimed the UK would benefit from closer ties with Europe, with Mr Burnham seizing on his comments to justify striking a new deal with Brussels.
Andrew Bailey said more open trade with the EU would improve growth, telling the BBC: ‘Would the UK being able to trade more openly with its nearest neighbours, to have that trade, to have that market openness, be beneficial for growth in the UK? My view is yes, it would.’
In response, Mr Burnham said in a separate BBC interview on Friday night: ‘The governor of the Bank of England said yesterday that getting closer to Europe again would bring growth. And that is what I’m trying to do.’
But Shanker Singham, a former government trade adviser and chairman of The Growth Commission, said: ‘Quite simply, this EU reset is being sold to the British people on the back of flawed assumptions and bogus calculations.’
A Treasury source said the department had not yet been asked to draw up a new analysis of potential EU options. A spokesman said the analysis of the new food and farming deal would be published ‘in due course’.