In the age of Brexit economic forecasters should be defended rather than vilified

When a recently leaked government document revealed estimates of the harm to the economy under three plausible scenarios of Britain’s future outside the European Union, Brexit minister Steve Baker made an extraordinary response attacking civil-service forecasts as “always wrong.” Such politicisation and vilification of economic forecasting is one of the many pernicious effects of Brexit.

This tawdry nihilism should be resisted. The economists inside government who are asked to make the forecasts deserve support from ministers rather than abuse for their efforts. And since most forecasters…