A BBC Question Time audience member shut down a Tory minister who tried to dismiss the sustained impact of Brexit as “something that happened six years ago”.
Treasury minister Victoria Atkins was responding to criticism from the crowd that leaving the EU has underpinned the UK’s current economic strife, and suggested it was no longer relevant.
She added “international headwinds” are causing the problems that have tipped the country into a recession.
This week, a former Bank of England policymaker said that the UK economy has been “permanently damaged” by Brexit, because it reduced the country’s potential output and resulted in reduced investment into UK businesses.
After their confrontation ended on the TV show, another audience member said it was “not good enough” to say Brexit was historic, and described how quitting the bloc had been a “disaster”.
He said his business, which exports books to the EU, is “hanging in there”, and added “I have no interest in trading with Australia or New Zealand”.
He said: “Brexit is a factor. The two main parties are not talking about it. But we are talking about it, and BBC journalists are starting to question politicians about it. And it’s about time we got it out in the open.
“We had a vote, we had a marginal decision in favour of leaving, whatever that meant. It meant lots of different things to different people. But Brexit ... it’s a disaster. It’s a disaster for our economy.
“Growth is not a new thing. We need to grow and we need to export, and we need to export to our biggest and most obvious market, which is just over 20 miles away and across the Channel.”
Atkins argued there hadn’t been time to have an “objective assessment of Brexit on our economy”, and made international comparisons to spare the UK economy’s blushes that have already been debunked by the BBC.