EU referendum: Brexit 'an enormous economic problem'

Former Prime Minister Tony Blair has said leaving the EU would create “an enormous economic problem” following any Brexit vote on 23 June.
And an online survey of econ­omists for The Observer showed 88% of those who responded be­lieved that EU withdrawal would be damaging for the UK economy.
There was a 17% response rate to the survey, from 639 economists.
The Vote Leave campaign said economists had been wrong in the past about whether the UK should join the euro.

“There was a cosy consensus among economists supporting Britain scrapping the pound 15 years ago... they were wrong then and they are wrong now,” Mat­thew Elliott, chief executive of Vote Leave, said in a statement.
Speaking on the BBC One Marr Show, former Labour leader Mr. Blair, a Remain supporter, said “if we vote to leave we will suffer an immediate shock to our economy” and “years of uncertainty”.
He said this was not a hypotheti­cal risk but “something you will see directly in people’s jobs and living standards” and in the confidence of business to trade.
“What is now clear... is that if we did vote to leave, the econom­ic aftershock would be severe,” he added.