By rebalancing Britain's economy, Brexit is succeeding where George Osborne failed

Yet again this morning comes a demonstration of the enormous gulf between gloomy economic forecasts pumped out by those opposed to Brexit and much more positive data from the real world. And guess which received the biggest headlines. Britain, claims PwC, is about to miss out on a surge in global growth – the best in seven years – as ‘uncertainty relating to Brexit’ acts as a drag on the UK economy. A survey by the CBI and a recruitment firm claims that 63 per cent of businesses think that Britain will become less competitive in the next five years.

Meanwhile comes a remarkable insight into current conditions in the real economy, curiously also from the CBI. Its monthly Industrial Trends Survey reveals that orders for goods produced by British firms are at their highest in 30 years. The survey asks member firms a simple question: are manufacturing orders higher or lower than normal? It doesn’t quantify anything beyond totting up the relative number of firms answering ‘higher’ and ‘lower’, but it does give a very advanced peek into the state of the economy as tomorrow’s orders, or lack of orders, inevitably translates into tomorrow’s profits or losses.