Ross Clark

Next time it comes to redesigning the PPE course at Oxford, I suggest a module beginning with a quotation from George Osborne. It’s something he said to the Treasury Select Committee in May, back when he was still Chancellor: ‘If you look at the sheer weight of opinion, it is overwhelmingly the case that people who look at the case for leaving the EU come to the conclusion it would make the country poorer, and it would make the individuals in the country poorer, too.’ There might be advantages to Brexit, he said, ‘but let’s not pretend we’d be economically better off’. In other words: it wasn’t just George Osborne’s opinion that Britain would be worse off if we left the EU; it was objective fact.

So, last week’s sharp rise in the Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) for manufacturing wasn’t a freak. This morning its twin, the PMI for the much larger services sector, also showed a huge rebound to 52.9, more than reversing the fall to 47.4 in July and putting it marginally ahead of PMI for the Eurozone, which stands at 52.8. The combined PMI was 53.2 in August. Anything above 50 suggests that the economy in expanding while anything below 50 suggests contraction. Just like last week’s manufacturing figure, this morning’s news seems to have caught forecasters unaware: the consensus was for PMI in services to be 50.0.

Day by day, the vote for Brexit on 23 June is coming more and more to resemble Black Wednesday, the day when sterling plummeted out of the Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM). Then, as now, the event was initially treated by many as a national calamity – before it steadily became apparent just how a big a fillip it had provided the economy. This morning’s good news is the Markit/CIPS Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI), which surged to 53.3 in August. This more than makes up for the plunge to 48.2 in July. Anything above 50 indicates expansion in activity, and anything below 50 contraction. The month-on-month rise was the largest in 25 years.

Imagine the reaction of Her Majesty’s Opposition if the government announced that it was to introduce a new ‘voter charge’ – a levy which citizens had to pay before they were allowed into the polling station. Just as they did with the ‘Community Charge’ over a quarter of a century ago Labour would undoubtedly – and quite reasonably – call it a ‘poll tax’. How could a democracy possibly try to exclude the poor from the vote, they would ask, before backing a legal challenge on the grounds of human rights? Why, then, is Labour so determined to introduce its own internal poll tax?

It is beginning to look like a bit of a trend this year: the Conservatives get themselves into a tight spot, only for Labour to trump them quickly. Just as the Tories seemed to be descending into a bitter leadership crisis on the weekend after the referendum, half the shadow cabinet resigned. Now, just as David Cameron was being mauled from all quarters over the cronies in his resignation honours list (including from the presumably not soon-to-be Lord Hilton), Jeremy Corbyn has directed attention to himself by ennobling Shami Chakrabarti, formerly of human rights group Liberty. The appointment is embarrassing three times over. Firstly, because he said last year: 'Labour will certainly not nominate new peers for the Lords, which risks undermining its legitimacy'.

During the Blair years the security guards at Labour party conferences had a reputation for over-zealous intervention – remember the sight of octogenarian Walter Wolfgang being manhandled out of his seat and ejected from the chamber for daring to heckle Jack Straw over the Iraq War? Appropriately enough, under Corbyn, Labour’s conference security has the opposite problem – it seems to have been unilaterally-disarmed. As Guido Fawkes reveals this morning there is a serious possibility that this year’s event, scheduled to take place in Liverpool next month, will have to be cancelled owing to the party’s inability to organise security for the event. The problem goes back to last year when the party’s grandees high-mindedly decided to boycott G4S.

Yesterday was supposed to be the day the nuclear button was finally pressed – a vote by the board of French energy company EDF to go ahead with Hinkley C power station was assumed to be the moment at which the project would finally spring off the drawing board. Instead, business secretary Greg Clark announced that he needed until September to make a final decision on the government’s behalf. He is to be commended for not being pushed into the go-ahead. Hinkley – along with Heathrow and HS2 – is one of three ‘Hs’ bequeathed by the Cameron-Osborne years: hugely expensive infrastructure projects seemingly frustrated by chronic indecision.

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.

Of today’s corpses piled up in Downing Street, none has caused more shock than that of Michael Gove. That Nicky Morgan, who signed Gove’s nomination papers to be leader, has also gone hints at some kind of personal animosity. But might the explanation be more straightforward than that – simply one of his policy and approach as justice secretary? Gove acquired a reputation as a great reformer during his time at the Department for Education, facing down huge opposition from teachers’ unions in the process. He incurred considerable personal cost for doing this, with David Cameron shifting him to the whips office before the last election on the instructions of Sir Lynton Crosby, who feared Gove to be electorally toxic.

The award for most pathetic remark of the week goes to Tim Farron who earlier released a press statement saying this: 'Just 13 months after the last election the Conservatives have plunged the UK into chaos. It is simply inconceivable that Theresa May should be crowned Prime Minister without even having won an election in her own party, let alone the country. There must be an election. The Conservatives must not be allowed to ignore the electorate, their mandate is shattered and lies in ruins.

'I’m a gay woman with strong northern working-class roots,' Angela Eagle told Robert Peston on Sunday. 'I think I’m the right person for this job at this time.' In case we didn’t get the point she followed it up this morning by boasting: 'I’m a northern working-class girl who understands modern life.' How outrageous that Jeremy Corbyn’s challenger should bring her class, her geographical birthplace and her sexuality into the leadership debate, suggesting that they would make her a more suitable leader than Corbyn.   Or maybe it isn’t outrageous that someone should draw on their personal experiences while campaigning for office.