Ross Clark

I would like to think that the lack of obvious progress on negotiating a post-Brexit deal with the EU is, as Theresa May said this week, part of a strategy – that there is a lot going on behind the scenes but it is not in our interests for the Government to give a ‘running commentary’ on it. But listening to the foreign secretary speaking before the Commons foreign affairs committee I am beginning to wonder. Maybe, actually nothing is going on. Top of Boris’s ‘to do’ list, it seems, is not securing trade deals with the world beyond the EU. It is securing himself a royal yacht on which he can then swan around the world - perhaps doing a trade deal or two on the way.

Only in the bizarre, upside-down, post-Brexit referendum world could Tesco try to portray itself as a victim of bullying by one of its suppliers. Isn’t Tesco supposed to be the nasty corporation which ruthlessly uses its might to squash the people who produce the goods which line its shelves? What about all those farmers, dairies and small-time cookie-makers apparently given a tough time by hard-nosed buyers at Tesco, who always want everything cheaper and for payment terms to be stretched out ever longer? I don’t expect anyone to feel sorry for Tesco – I’m certainly not sobbing over my Marmite sandwiches – but the reality is that yes, the supermarket really has met its match.

Remember how Brexit was going to cost jobs and investment? At times, even Leave campaigners struggled to find the confidence to persuade themselves that European companies would continue to invest in the UK, falling back instead on the argument that Brexit would provide an opportunity to attract investment from elsewhere in the world. How long ago all that seems now. Today, French train manufacturer Alston has confirmed that it is to build a new £20 million manufacturing plant at Widnes in Cheshire, creating 600 jobs. The plant will refurbish West Coast main line trains and be used as a manufacturing base for future trains for the UK market.

A country votes against the EU in a referendum in which rabidly anti-immigrant sentiments are aired by senior politicians. That is Hungary, of course, where voters have just rejected -- with a majority of 98 per cent, albeit it on a turnout of 44 per cent, too low to make it binding  -- an EU plan for the country to house 1200 refugees. Now, perhaps, the Remain camp in Britain will stop trying to portray Britain as a nasty, xenophobic country out of step with European values and admit that actually we are really rather liberal in our attitudes towards migration. The only difference is that we had an in-out referendum on EU membership and no other country has yet done so.

Today’s decision to give the go-ahead for Hinkley C after a six-week review seems to confirm what was indicated in July: that Theresa May’s problem with the project was mostly concerned with security issues. What has been announced today is that the government will take a special share in all future nuclear power projects to prevent the plants being sold to unapproved investors. There is no indication that ministers have sought to renegotiate the price. Consumers will still pay EDF for the electricity generated by Hinkley for the next 35 years: £92.50 for every MWh – around double the current wholesale market price.

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'.