Eu

Since he moved to Hong Kong three years ago, the Rat’s Cantonese has been coming on apace. This has rather less to do with his language skills — never that much in evidence on his school reports — than it does with the fact that my stepson works in what is still, despite the mainland Chinese’s best efforts, one of the most aggressively free-market cultures in the world. ‘It’s like this,’ Rat explained, when the Fawn and I visited earlier this year. ‘If you want to get a cab somewhere urgent in the morning and you can’t speak good enough Cantonese then basically you’re stuffed. The drivers just swear at

Theresa May has made one thing clear: Brexit mean Brexit. But when will the Prime Minister actually pull the trigger and invoke Article 50? Boris Johnson gave his take last night: ‘The Government is working towards an Article 50 letter which as you know will be produced, probably, in the early part of next year. That’s still subject for discussion but what is clear I think to our friends and partners in the EU is two broad principles: we are not leaving Europe; Although we are leaving the EU treaties, we do want to have the closest possible trading relationship and it’s very much in their interests to achieve that…

The Brexit bounce continues. HM Treasury has today released forecasts of the economists it follows, as it does every month. Last time, there was a flurry of downgrades and forecasts of an immediate recession. Now, these forecasts are being torn up by everyone, including by the FT (although you can bet the FT won’t report on the upgrades as eagerly as it did the downgrades). The average new forecast suggests GDP will grow by 1.8 per cent this year, far better than the 1.5 per cent forecast last month. This back to where the consensus was before the Brexit vote. The OECD, which had previously predicted “immediate” uncertainty after a

‘I am getting nervous. But it’s not because Trump is good. It’s because people are stupid’. So said the (usually) very funny US comedian Bill Maher on TV recently. When I heard him say it, my first thought was: Trump’s going to win. Not because Maher is right, but because I recognised something from the EU referendum campaign, when the great and the good – from metropolitan comedians to overpaid columnists — piled in to suggest that Brexit backers were all dimwitted lemmings, marching zombie-like off a cliff. Pro-EU devotees, some from positions of astonishing privilege, were punching down. It wasn’t a good look, and it harmed their cause. The

Unlike the boss, I thought Liam Fox’s comments on fat and lazy British businesses that could be exporting more but aren’t because, well, an afternoon on the golf course is more comfortable than striving for Britain were deplorable. But they were also telling. Because they were a further confirmation that the United Kingdom now has a nationalist government. The liberal Toryism of the Cameron era is gone, sunk with a whimper in record time. In its place is a Conservative nationalism that envisages SS Britannia buccaneering its way across the world’s oceans. This, after all, was the animating spirit of what we might call the Brexit campaign’s more cheerful wing. Well, it’s a nice

I’m not a great optimist about the whole Brexit thing, although my colleagues would mostly disagree. It’s as if we were expecting a storm and we’re now cheering because it’s gone quiet. Strangely, eerily quiet. Anyway, like with climate change, I hope I’m wrong, and whenever I have my doubts about the whole thing, I think about the ‘Remain’ protests led by Eddie Izzard. Let’s hope these obviously counter-productive demonstrations continue for the next five years. However, one disaster that doesn’t seem to have materialised yet is the warning that Brexit would lead to a brain drain. One guy in the Guardian, called Mr Imhof, says he’s going, which is a shame, as

In the referendum run-up, we were inundated with warnings and messages of doom and gloom about the untold damage Brexit would unleash – and unleash immediately. It took a pub boss – Tim Martin, the founder of JD Wetherspoon’s – to add a bit of perspective. Why, he argued, would consumer sentiment plunge of a majority voted Brexit and got what they wanted? Why, if we wouldn’t actually leave the EU for two years, would the economy fall of a cliff? At the time, he was mocked for knowing nothing more than how to pull pints. But now, with the prophecies of economic woe having failed to materialise, it seems he was more