Stephen Pollard

just how the real world can so often expose ideologically driven nonsense. In this case it’s the threats of the Remain campaign. At other times it’s the drivel that gets spouted by the hard-Left that has taken over the Labour Party. The moment it gets exposed to reality it collapses.

With Brexit, the reality that has destroyed the predictions of Project Fear is that consumers have done the opposite to those predictions. We were told that consumers would be petrified and that spending would collapse. This has turned out to be pure nonsense.

A report published this week by US bank Morgan Stanley found that just 7 per cent of the 1,000 people surveyed are worried about Brexit and have cut back on their spending.

To put this in perspective, that figure is less than half the number (17 per cent) who said in a YouGov poll that they think the Government has covered up evidence of the existence of intelligent extra-terrestrial life.

Far from worrying about Brexit, one in five people say the prospect has led them actually to increase their spending.

The vast majority of us are simply carrying on as normal, as was always going to happen whatever the Remainers said. This entirely normal behaviour is one of the drivers of the jobs boom.

Last month for example, 757,000 vacancies were advertised – up by 5,000 on January. Employment agency Reed says it now has more vacancies on its books than at any time in the past seven years.

It’s appropriate to point out that for all the lunacy of Project Fear, one of its architects – George Osborne – is also behind much of this economic good news, having built the solid foundations as chancellor from 2010 until last year.

But it’s not just in the socalled real economy where the news is so promising for our fortunes after Brexit.

Yesterday the FTSE-100 reached a record high. A combination of market confidence, a boost in US interest rates, the defeat of Geert Wilders in the Netherlands and a rise in the pound against the dollar led to the index hitting 7,424.96.

Remember the days after the vote when the market did fall – in shock because so few people predicted the result. We kept hearing that this was a harbinger of the doom to come.

But as soon as the surprise of the result passed, the FTSE started to climb. And climb. At the same time, a report out this week by Professor David Blake of Cass Business School forecasts an even brighter future for the City after Brexit.

JUST as we were told that if we didn’t join the euro the City would collapse, so the main threat of Project Fear was that the City would be destroyed by Brexit. And just as the City thrived because we ignored demands to join the euro, so it will thrive when we leave the EU.

In his report, Professor Blake says the key is keeping “transitional arrangements” as short as possible. And if there is no trading agreement in prospect, we should leave immediately.

Gloom over the City’s future is unjustified. As he says: “Brexit is a golden opportunity for the City of London to become a world financial centre which takes the lead in the new digital revolution.”

Brexit opens up fantastic opportunities. And as we approach 2019, the foundations are looking ever more secure.

‘Unemployment is at its lowest since 1975’