The brave new world of Brexit Britain

Although attributed to Milton Friedman, the assertion that ‘there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch’ had been around long before he took it for the title of an economics book in 1975. It has been used since by many who have never given monetarism a second’s thought.

Physicists say the universe is a closed system. No magic source can give it free energy or indeed calories. Mathematicians and computer technicians are as adamant that something cannot come from nothing. Everyone agrees the lunch bill must be paid. Everyone, that is, except British politicians and the voters who endorse them in their millions.

If it is true that a country gets the politicians it deserves, we must have descended into a state of catatonic stupidity to deserve Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, Theresa May, John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn. It is as if a paranoid fantasy has become real. In The Day of the Triffids, alien plants blind the population.