Ross Clark

The government’s opponents were not slow, as usual, to blame today’s disappointing data on economic growth on Brexit (the IOD) or ‘austerity’ (John McDonnell) – while the Chancellor, Philip Hammond, chose to fall back on that old chestnut used by corporate spokesmen when announcing dismal results: the weather. None of these will really do as an explanation as to why GDP growth, according to the ONS, plunged from a healthy 0.4 per cent in the final quarter of last year to a miserable 0.1 per cent in the first quarter of 2018. As for Brexit, GDP figures have been shrugging it off for nearly two years – the economy even accelerated for the first two quarters.

We are now just two months away from the second anniversary of the Brexit vote and therefore in a position to judge the apocalyptic forecast made by the Treasury in May 2016 in the run-up to the vote. In a paper signed off by George Osborne, which neither the former chancellor nor anyone else who has made a grim prognosis for Britain’s departure from the EU should be allowed to forget, the finest minds in the Treasury came up with two scenarios for the aftermath of a vote to leave the EU. In the ‘shock’ scenario, GDP would be 3.6 per cent lower after two years (compared with if the country had voted to remain), the pound would fall by 12 per cent and unemployment would rise by 520,000.

Next time I hear a government minister on radio or television bemoaning Britain’s poor record on productivity I request that the interviewer puts to them a simple question: can you tell us how many man-hours have been spent by large British firms in fulfilling their legal duty to provide data on their gender pay gap – something which they must do by midnight tonight? Whatever happened to that grand talk about taking advantage of Brexit in order to deregulate, to attract investment by giving businesses the freedom to run their own affairs and by getting the government off their backs? In January last year Philip Hammond made a speech in Germany saying how Britain was prepared to ditch its European-style social democratic model.

Why is it that whenever some organisation comes up with some half-baked prediction of doom for the UK economy post-Brexit it is splashed all over the news, yet real data on the economy gets ignored? Yesterday, the ONS quietly released the latest figures for Gross Fixed Capital Formation (GFCF) which covers investment across the whole economy, public and private sectors, manufacturing, construction, services and extractive industries. They showed that contrary to the received wisdom that investors have fled the UK following the Brexit vote, investment grew by 1.1 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2017, to a total of £84.1 billion. Over the course of 2017 it grew by 4 per cent compared with 2016. This was higher than for any other G7 country – with Italy following on 3.

Moves by the EU to try to stop British armed forces from accessing the Galileo satellite system, and to prevent British companies from bidding for work on it, are, as one senior UK official told the FT, ‘outrageous’. Britain has contributed 12 per cent of the costs. The EU’s argument that to allow British involvement would be a security risk are perverse, given that China, Israel, Ukraine and Morocco are participating in the project. Does anyone really think that relations between post-Brexit Britain and EU will sink so low that European governments will consider us more of a security risk than China? Galileo isn’t principally a military system at all.

How many times over the past few months have some remain supporters tried to tell us that tariffs on imported goods are a very big deal indeed? Were trade between Britain and the EU to revert to World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules, they assert, the UK economy would be reduced to ruins. Food prices would soar, leaving millions scrabbling around in bins. British firms will never export anything ever again. This morning comes a slightly different tack. Actually, it seems that tariffs don’t really matter all that much at all. Removing them, according to reports broadcast loudly at various points during the Today programme this morning, will hardly affect consumer prices.     The reason for the sudden change of heart?

It seems obvious, doesn’t it? Jeremy Corbyn, in a comment piece in the Guardian, continues to insist that Putin might not have been behind the Salisbury attack – when even his shadow foreign secretary, Emily Thornberry, says there is ‘prima facie evidence’ of the involvement of the Russian government. Labour backbenchers sign a motion pointedly calling for ‘unequivocal’ recognition of Russian government involvement – exactly what Corbyn has refused to give. And that is just the internal opposition from within the Labour party. Political commentators are scathing of his position, myself included.

Who stands between the government and a proper, effective sanctions regime against Russia? Not Jeremy Corbyn, though he might wish he could. Putin is going to get away with the Salisbury attack, suffering little more than a token expulsion of diplomats, thanks to anti-fracking protesters. They didn’t mean it, of course. When they stood before the bulldozers in the Sussex village Balcombe, jumped up and down about mini-Earth tremors in Lancashire they thought they were doing the Earth a favour. They saw UK-produced shale gas as a dirty alternative to clean, carbon-free energy. But they were wrong. In the short to medium term at least the alternative to UK-produced shale gas was imported gas, an increasing proportion of which comes from Russia.