Mark Carney’s referendum ‘uncertainty spike’ exposed as bluster

In the runup to the referendum, we heard repeated warnings that, whatever the outcome of the actual vote, the damage to the UK economy had been done. The Bank of England, whose governor has been accused of becoming something of a fellow traveller for Project Fear, warned in its Monetary Policy Committee meeting in March that: ‘There appears to be increased uncertainty surrounding the forthcoming referendum on UK membership of the European Union’. In April, the BoE was at it again, downgrading second-quarter growth from 0.5 per cent to 0.3 per cent. Warnings such as these risk of being self-fulfilling: if you talk about uncertainty, it’s hardly surprising that investors feel uncertain, creating a knock-on effect out of nowhere.

But it was confirmed today that UK’s economy actually grew by 0.6 per cent over April, May and June of this year. Household spending drove the growth, rising at its fastest rate in eight years. What’s more, the Office