Look to the future

The Conservative government has finally had to agree to revealing what research predicts will happen to us post-Brexit - research kept secret until its existence was leaked in April. The reason Mr Davis, the Brexit secretary, gave for keeping them secret (even from Parliament) was that it would be bad for negotiations, and "not in the public interest".

I have never heard of someone keeping good news secret to protect people, and Mr Davis would hardly keep secret a bunch of studies that showed how well we would do without a deal, would he? If they matched Leave's promises then we would be able to charge the EU to keep them under wraps.

So we know that they are going to be bad news. The promise is that the documents will be published in some form, so we may never know quite how bad the news really is. Well, until it happens, of course.

After much public pressure the concession was extracted by Labour forcing a vote. Mrs May forbade her MPs from voting to avoid an embarrassing defeat - a strategy she is using rather frequently now.

This is another example of wartime-like secrecy that Mrs May has imposed on the British democratic process. And it becoming clear whom she fears. Her junior MPs are still loyal - not a single one asked for the studies to be released, Mr Corbyn supports Brexit, while the Lib Dems have become an irrelevance. Mrs May is keeping secrets from members of her own camp, senior Conservatives who fear the damage Brexit will do to the UK, and in particular Ken Clarke, an MP for 47 years and leader of a cross-party group of pro-EU MPs, has already had private talks with Mr Barnier, the EU's chief negotiator.

Of course, the real danger isn't Mr Clarke knowing. It isn't the EU finding out. It is us, the British public, learning what the Brexiteers are really leading us into.