Boris Johnson hasn’t learned the lesson of his Brexit referendum win

During the 2016 referendum battle, I consistently said that leaving the EU would make the UK poorer, though probably not as poor in the short term as George Osborne was arguing.

But – as I always added night after grinding night on the News at Ten and in a couple of Tonight films I made for ITV – there were other reasons why people might choose Brexit, such as increasing the independent power of Parliament and the courts, or having a greater say over who can come to live and work here.

The complaint of Remainers after the election result that ‘no one voted to make themselves poorer’ was a canard, a convenient fiction. This was to imply that only wise Remainers were privileged enough to understand the basic laws of economics.

They were patronising and wrong.

Many people voted to leave the EU aware of the likely cost to their living standards and because that was a price worth paying to make a reality of an idea they had of themselves and their country.