Matthew Lynn

If it was in a playground in one of the rougher parts of town, which increasingly it resembles, this could easily escalate. One candidate remarks that he thinks the party should ‘f**k business’ so another one wades in to argue ‘f**k 'f**k business'’. And perhaps by lunchtime some other candidate you have never really heard off will be tweeting that instead the party should ‘f**k, 'f**k, f**k business'’. Before long, the Tory party leadership contest will start to look like the bits that were edited out of a Malcolm Tucker rant in The Thick of It for being too sweary. And yet the row spectacularly misses the point. Of course the Conservative party should be pro-business. But that is not quite the same thing as being pro-Big Business and its lobbyists.

It might be 30 per cent. It might be 35 per cent. It could even be 40 per cent or higher. Until the results of the European elections come in late on Sunday night, we won't know what percentage of the vote Nigel Farage’s new Brexit party will get. But we do know that it will be the clear winner, and that it will have established itself as a major new force in British politics. So far, the party has deliberately said very little about its policies, although most of us are getting the vibe it might be in favour of leaving the European Union. Once the dust settles on Monday morning, however, that will have to change. It will be in the driving seat. It will be time for some Farage-onomics. So what would that look like?

Factories would move abroad to escape punitive tariffs. The ports would be blocked up. The hospitals would run out of medicines and fruit would remain unpicked on trees. Over the last three years, we have become used to wildly over-the-top predictions about all the terrible things that would happen to the British economy if we ever get around to leaving the European Union. But if you thought that was bad, and global investors were nervous about putting money into the UK markets, wait until you see what happens as they start to get to grips with the plans should Jeremy  Corbyn and John McDonnell ever move into Numbers 10 and 11 Downing Street. The FTSE is already one of the cheapest major indices in the world but that doesn't mean it can't get a lot cheaper still.

The sunshine was glorious. There was a new episode of Game of Thrones to watch in the middle of the night, and everyone seems to have forgotten about Brexit for a while. As bank holiday weekends go, it was a pretty good one. Under a Labour government, however, it would have been even better. Instead of going back to work, today would have been the St George’s Day holiday and we could all have slept in for another twenty-four hours. The trouble is, lots more state-directed time off is the last thing the British economy needs. Indeed, in a deregulated, flexible gig economy it is debatable whether we need bank holidays at all – and we certainly don’t need yet more of them.

Maybe we will go for a Norway-Double Plus. Or A Canada-Minus. Or Common Market 2.0, or a WTO-Light, an EEA-Doubled, or an Enhanced EFTA or even a Singapore Sling or a White Russian. Okay, scratch those last two. I seem to have mixed up a list of options for leaving the European Union with a cocktail menu. But that pair aside – and who knows, maybe late on a Thursday night MPs will vote them through instead – they are all ways that we might eventually leave. Amid all the arguments over our departure, however, one point is easily overlooked. For the economy, after we sailed through the original deadline for getting out, it doesn’t make a lot of difference anymore. Leaving the EU was always going to do some damage to business, even if the impact was exaggerated.

It would only encourage irresponsible lending. Deficits would run out of control. The rules of the single currency would be undermined, and voters would lose faith in the euro. Over the last few years, the Germans, the European Central Bank, and the EU itself, have been adamant that banks shouldn’t be bailed out inside the eurozone. Along the way, Greek, Cypriot, Italian and Irish banks have all been allowed to go to the wall or squeezed to extinction. But hold on. There seems to be an exception to that austere financial regime. Big German banks. With the once mighty Deutsche Bank in serious trouble, it turns out there is nothing wrong with the government orchestrating what amounts to a rescue after all.

It would stop us crashing out. It would give us enough time to negotiate a free-trade deal. It would allow business time to prepare, and for the government to put in place all the extra infrastructure we might need once we are outside the European Union. As the deadline draws closer and closer, the pressure is mounting for a delay to our departure from the EU. At first that was just likely to be a few week or months. But now Brussels is talking about two years. But hold on. That is crazy. Sure, plenty of big businesses will be supporting that, and lots of people will be arguing it is the only way to avert a potential economic catastrophe. They are understandably nervous about leaving without a deal. But in fact, it would be the worst possible outcome for the economy. Why?

Cripes. At this rate the CBI will be putting out reports on Brexit's potential benefits, George Osborne will be reminding us he could always see its upside, and even the FT will be running leaders saying Brexit doesn’t quite mean the end of the world. There have been plenty of twists and turns in our tortured departure from the European Union but few quite so unexpected as the apparent conversion of the Governor of the Bank of England Mark Carney to the cause. In a speech yesterday, Carney didn't opt for any of the apocalyptic stuff – no food on the shelves at Tesco, pensioners dying in hospitals because of a shortage of medicines, slight delays at the Tuscany airports – but instead he took a more measured, reasonable approach.

There will be chaos at the ports. Only the occasional root vegetable will be sold in the supermarkets. The factories and farms will run out of workers, and the planes will all be grounded on the runway. We have yet to get an official warning about how the black death will ravage the land, or how cannibalism will make a comeback. But it may just be a matter of time. As we head into the New Year, and as our departure from the European Union, quite possibly without any form of deal, draws closer, the warnings will become ever more darkly apocalyptic. As 2019 starts, we still don’t have much idea what will happen with Brexit. We may grudgingly accept Theresa’s May’s deal.

Parliament is deadlocked. The cabinet is split down the middle and Brussels won’t compromise on the deal it has already offered to the Prime Minister. As the clock ticks steadily towards March 29th, there seems little way out of the impasse surrounding our tortured exit from the European Union. No one can agree on how to leave, or how to stay either. Against that backdrop, it is probably no great surprise that a second referendum is gaining momentum. It is at least a way out of the mess, and possibly a more decisive one than any of the alternatives. Theresa May has spoken out against that today, even if many of her Cabinet ministers are staying strangely silent on the issue. As the debate intensifies over Christmas, business and the City should support her in that stance.

The ports will be clogged up with lorries. The shelves at Tesco will be empty. Doctors will be rationing antibiotics, and the army will be called out to deliver food. As we approach the deadline for our departure from the European Union, as the Prime Minister returns empty handed yet again from yet another catastrophic round of negotiations in Brussels, and as the cliff-edge gets closer and closer, the conventional wisdom is that the pressure on Britain to agree to something – anything! – becomes more and more intense. And yet, as so often in the through-the-looking glass world of Brexit, that conventional wisdom is a bit off target. And not just by a little as it happens, but by 180 degrees.