Brexit

For all Gordon Brown’s economic mistakes, he at least tried to build confidence in the British economy. In the build-up to the European Union referendum, David Cameron and George Osborne did the opposite. Osborne, as Chancellor, ignored the good news, accentuated the bad and tried to portray Britain as an economic weakling propped up by EU membership. He was joined by a great many investment banks who produced analyses saying that Britain’s life outside the EU would be catastrophic. Since the referendum, these anticipations of doom have continued. It is rather strange to watch. Encouraging economic news — the increase in high-street spending, the buoyant demand for jobs through recruitment agencies — is brushed aside.

It is still a little too early to say for sure that George Osborne’s gloom-laden economic forecasts for post-Brexit Britain were bunk. But never mind the future, it now emerges that he wasn’t much good at telling us what was happening in the present. Throughout the referendum campaign he could barely disguise his contempt for the whole exercise, telling us that the UK economy was suffering from the mere fact we were having a vote. A week before referendum day, for example, he told us that  'The economic uncertainty that the ‘Leave’ campaign carelessly insist won’t be caused is already being seen.' Whatever he was seeing, it didn’t reflect reality. The growth figures for the second quarter released today reveal that in fact the economy grew by 0.

It turns out rock didn’t die when Elvis joined the Army in 1958, or when the Beatles accepted their OBEs in the 1960s, or when Vivienne Westwood went from making filthy t-shirts for punks to being dressmaker-in-chief to the filthy-rich bourgeoisie. No, it died last Thursday, outside Liverpool St, when an NME distributor shoved the latest issue of the once rebellious mag into my hands and I glanced at its cover and realised it is a special issue on how to cope with life outside the EU. For real. In the words of NME editor Mike Williams, this latest issue is chock-a-block with ‘sage advice’ on how to cope with the post-Brexit ‘madness that’s engulfed the UK’. It’s one of the saddest things I’ve ever seen.

In last month's EU referendum, pundits and politicians were left surprised when Brexit triumphed with 52 per cent of the vote. Since then not everyone has taken the outcome lying down. While the SNP's Nicola Sturgeon is adamant that Scotland should not have to leave the EU, a number of Remain-ers in England -- including David Lammy -- have suggested the result should be overturned or ignored for the good of the people. Now one Scot has offered their two cents worth from across the pond. In an interview with the Scottish Herald, Alan Cumming -- the Good Wife actor who resides in New York -- has blamed the referendum result on... 'stupid English people': 'I was appalled when I heard the result. And I have three words to sum it up. Stupid. English. People.

Those who acted as the biggest cheerleaders for Project Fear in the run-up to the referendum now have the awkward task of changing tack. One of those shouting loudly was Rob Wainwright, the British head of Europol. A key campaign strategy of David Cameron was that Britain would be safer in the European Union - and, ergo, less safe outside of it. Joining him in those warnings was Wainwright, who said that if the UK was no longer a member of the EU, Britain would become a 'second-tier member' of the crime-fighting club. He said, in the event of Brexit, that: 'It would make it harder for Britain to fight terrorism and crime.' This morning, he's been striking a somewhat different note.