Unemployment would soar. Trade would collapse. Factories would close, and house prices would be in freefall. Rewind to the spring and summer of 2016, when Project Fear was at its peak, and we were meant to be shivering in the streets by now, flicking through battered copies of ‘The Road’ for tips on surviving in a post-apocalyptic wasteland as a result of leaving the EU.
Instead, we learned today that the UK economy is doing pretty well. It expanded by 0.5 per cent in the latest quarter, well ahead of forecasts. Even the Governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, one of the dark overlords of Project Fear, now agrees that Britain is back in the mainstream of the global economy. The collapse so confidently predicted when we voted to leave has completely failed to materialise.
True, there may have been some spin in those forecasts.
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