Ross Clark
29 per cent of 18 to 24-year-olds and 46 per cent of 25 to 49-yearolds.
As for Sir Vince’s charge that old people voted according to nostalgia for an imperial past, what decade does he think we are living in? There was a time when old folks’ homes were full of colonels who had served in India but you need to be more than 100 to have any adult recollection of the heyday of the British Empire.
Today’s septuagenarians are more likely to have memories of the Summer of Love and Woodstock. They were the young generation of the 1960s who saw Europe as a land of opportunity in contrast to economically-troubled Britain. They went on to participate in the referendum of 1975 when Britain voted two to one in favour of remaining in what was then the Common Market.
Much of what else Sir Vince says is nonsense: he claims “the Remain argument about economic damage is now largely accepted” amid “mounting evidence of a slowing economy and rising inflation”.
He writes of “banks taking jobs to the Continent” and “lengthening queues to cross national borders”.
On inflation he is factually incorrect: Consumer Price Inflation) last month fell from 2.9 to 2.6 per cent. As for banks
MEANWHILE, exports are up and there is confidence in manufacturing – the Purchasing Managers’ Index last month leapt to 55.1, where anything over 50 denotes expansion. If consumer spending is flagging it is no bad thing given the level of consumer debt.
The UK economy is finally achieving the rebalancing – away from consumer spending and towards exports – that has been necessary for many years.
Sir Vince complains of “lengthening queues” at borders. That is because of new rules at entry points to the Schengen area – a common customs area of which we have never been part. We have not even left the EU yet, so there has been no change in the status of Britons travelling to other EU countries.
As for his charge of “masochism” he quotes a YouGov poll which asked a silly, loaded question and got a silly answer.
The idea that 39 per cent of Leave voters “don’t mind losing their job” is bunk. They were asked a question of which very few will have accepted the premise: would they still have voted for Brexit even knowing that it would harm the economy? YouGov should go back and ask Remain voters a question that might have more resonance: would they still oppose Brexit even if it brought huge economic benefits?
Somehow, I don’t think Sir Vince would like to answer that one with a plain “yes” or “no”. The vast majority of people who voted Leave did so because they think it will make the country better-off. They might, though, appreciate one person losing his job – Vince Cable.
‘Unemployment is at its lowest since 1975’