Is living at sea the best way to escape this Brexit nightmare?

The first time I was ever commissioned by the Daily Mail, the voice on the phone said: ‘You used to be a banker, you must know all about fraud. Everyone else is saying the SFO is rubbish, so we want a piece that says “We support the fraud fighters”.’ Not my field, I said, and possibly not my opinion. ‘Are you a journalist or aren’t you?’ barked the voice. ‘A thousand words by teatime.’ I wrote the piece and the BBC rang twice the next day to interview me as a City fraud expert. It was a lesson in how the media stays half a day ahead of its consumers in terms of specialist knowledge — and in the thanklessness of the task of the Serious Fraud Office, which then as now stood accused of failing to nail widespread financial wrongdoing, despite ‘heavy-handed’ methods, and of achieving shamefully low conviction rates.