The former chair of the Conservative Party has laid out just how bleak he believes the UK's economic prospects are.
Chris Patten was the chair of the Tories under John Major, served as the governor of Hong Kong and is currently the chancellor at the University of Oxford. Speaking on the BBC's Question Time he said the "political establishment" were "very reluctant" to tell people the truth, adding: "The truth is, we're in one hell of a mess".
Baron Patten said: "Our GDP per capita now is less than not only France, Germany, the Netherlands, it's lower than Ireland. It's lower for heaven's sake than Lithuania. The poorest 20% in Britain are poorer than the poorest 20% in Poland. That is not the sign of a community, of a country, which has things going for it." You can get more politics news and other story updates straight to your inbox by subscribing to our newsletters here.
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He then pointed to the words of Larry Summers, the former American Treasury Secretary, recently, on the prospects for Britain, who said: "Britain is in a much worse position than others."
In explaining why this was Chris Patten said: "First of all it is because of inflation. And inflation is partly a result of spending a great deal of money, which was necessary in order to deal with energy prices. It's also because of a lax monetary policy by the Bank of England."
However, he then pointed to Brexit as one of the single biggest reasons that the UK economic prospects were in the toilet. Laying bare what the decision to leave the EU had done to the UK, he said: "This is a word one isn't supposed to use anymore, it's also because of Brexit. It's because of what Brexit did to the value of the pound. It's because of what Brexit has done to make it more difficult for us to import goods and for us to import labour. And importing food now is costing us, according to the LSE, £7 billion more a year, because we're outside the European Union"
He then called on Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Labour leader Keir Starmer to "fess" to how bad things were going to get. He said: "Until we start facing up to the realities of our life, to the fact that we can't possibly spend money on all the things we want, increased public spending and cutting taxes. It's absolutely impossible. You can't do all those things.
"I think Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer are decent human beings. I just wish they would fess up to the fact that we have to tell people what they're going to have to expect in the next few years because I think it's going to be very tough to get out of the hole that we're in."
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