We can be grateful for small mercies. 4 November 2022 will go down as the day when a presenter on the Today programme finally challenged a dodgy statistic trying to blame economic collapse on Brexit. The statistic in question was put forward by former Bank of England governor Mark Carney in an interview with the Financial Times last month in which he said: ‘Put it this way, in 2016 the British economy was 90 per cent the size of Germany’s. Now it is less than 70 per cent.’
Was Carney’s ultra-loose monetary policy not part of the cause of today’s inflationary environment?
Mishal Husain, to her credit, put this to Carney this morning, pointing out that economists had challenged this figure. In particular, Jonathan Portes of Kings College London (whom Husain felt the need to point out is ‘absolutely not a Brexiteer’ because Brexiteers of course cannot be trusted) had explained what was wrong with the ‘zombie statistic’.
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