Prime Minister at the time David "I'm outta here" Cameron forbade any civil servant from doing any forward planning for the possibility of a pro-Brexit vote. They could think about it, but they weren't allowed to write anything down.
But the Chancellor of the Exchequer at the time, George Osborne, did make some dire predictions about the possible aftermath. Many other experts and specialist bodies also carried out analyses (including the Scottish Government, which has been ahead of the game on Brexit all along, and still is), and many voices in the Remain camp saw what would result quite clearly (including not a few UK DUers).
During the campaign, they were dismissed as "Project Fear", the term "fake news" not having gained currency yet. Others in the hard-line Brexit camp felt that any economic downsides were irrelevant because what mattered was "taking our country back". Some went so far as to argue that the UK had gotten "too soft", and a period of economic pain and struggle would be good for the national soul.
Even after the vote, Theresa May's government failed to carry out any detailed analyses. Brexit secretary David Davis repeatedly claimed they had drawn up impact papers, but when parliament finally demanded to see them, it turned out they didn't exist:
David Davis told a committee of MPs on Wednesday that the UK government had produced no economic forecasts on the likely impact of Brexit on various sectors of the economy.
It seemed to stand in marked contrast to many of the things he had said before about analysis being carried out by his Department for Exiting the European Union (DExEU).
See if you can identify where and when Davis has previously talked about the impact studies and analysis being carried out on a sectoral basis.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/dec/07/what-brexit-impact-papers-quiz-on-what-david-davis-said-whenI've no idea what Davis did during his time in office, but he seems to have been positively Trumpian in his work ethic.
So the impact papers had to be hastily cobbled together with all the insight of a team of under-performing high-schoolers:
The threadbare state of government preparations for Brexit was exposed on Thursday as civil service reports once heralded for providing “excruciating detail” on the impact of leaving the EU were criticised for containing little more than padding, repetition and plagiarism.
Months of pressure for disclosure of the economic analysis culminated, several hours before the Christmas parliamentary recess, with the publication of most of the 850 pages recently provided to a Commons select committee by the Brexit secretary, David Davis.
Davis had previously claimed there was extensive Whitehall analysis of “about 50 cross-cutting sectors, [for] what is going to happen to them”. But when a Labour-led vote demanded these forecasts be released to MPs, the Brexit secretary said he had been misunderstood and told the committee no impact assessments existed, only analysis of each sector’s current dependency on the EU.
Nevertheless, the limited nature of the unredacted civil service reports that were finally made public on Thursday left many observers shocked. “There is little overarching analysis by the government, ” said Lord Jay, the former head of the Foreign Office who is now acting chair of the Lords Brexit committee. “No conclusions are drawn with regard to the UK’s future relationship with the EU.”
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/dec/21/civil-service-reports-brexit-criticised-padding-plagiarismIt's only in the last few months, as the deadline pressure has mounted, that the details have seriously been revealed and discussed. And none of it's comforting.
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