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 0.6 per cent, up on the first quarter and higher than many were predicting.
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