Output is under pressure. Prices are starting to rise, living standards are getting squeezed, and every day brings fresh stories of one bank or another leasing office space in Frankfurt or Dublin. As the International Monetary Fund downgrades its growth forecast for the UK, whole edging up its predictions for our continental neighbours, Remainers can hardly believe their luck. Finally, all those predictions of disaster are coming true. Indeed, some are starting to describe Britain as the ‘sick man of Europe’ – a particularly potent phrase, since it was precisely to escape that label that we joined the EU in the first place more than four decades ago.
The trouble is, there is a problem with taking the IMF too seriously. It is a terrible forecaster. More importantly, it still doesn’t seem to have gotten its head around the economics of Brexit. Until it does, no one need pay it much attention.
In its latest assessment of the global economy, the Fund has trimmed its forecast for the UK to 1.7
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