The Guardian

Owned by: Scott Trust Limited, run by a board with a policy of non-interference.

Editor: Katharine Viner

Political leaning: Left

Daily circulation: circa. 161,000

Brexit stance: Anti-Brexit

Today’s leading headline: MPs’ fury over edited Brexit impact reports

David Davis could be in contempt of parliament after his department “heavily edited government reports on the impact of Brexit on 58 industrial sectors before handing them over to a select committee”. Various MPs have been demanding Davis reveal the government estimates of the impact of Brexit on the economy since the beginning of the year; Commons declared he must do it, and today he gave the committee a singular 850-page summary. In the summary, Davis and his team have omitted any parts they deem ‘sensitive’ or ‘damaging to the UK’s negotiating position with Brussels”.

Naturally, writes the Guardian, MPs were incandescent with rage. “We cannot and should not be short-changed”, said one MP.

Afterthought: Davis countered the accusations of deliberate obstruction by saying that the 58 impact assessments had never existed in the first place. In a letter to the committee head Hilary Benn he stated:

“Since the start of this process the government has been clear there are not, nor have there ever been, a series of discrete impact assessments arising out of our analysis of the 58 sectors”

Unfortunately for Davis, because this is 2017 and every single person on this small blue planet can use Google, it took all of 5 minutes to show that he was lying.

Speaking on December 14th last year, Davis stated:

We are in the midst of carrying out about 57 sets of analyses, each of which has implications for individual parts of 85 percent of the economy … Our 57 studies cover 85 percent of the economy — everything except sectors that are not affected by international trade.”

(H/T to Jack Blanchard of POLITICO for the find)

Ultimately commentators believe it’s all meaningless. The government does have estimates of the potential cost of Brexit but releasing the full figures would most likely harm the country’s negotiating position. That was all Davis had to say.