What the papers say: It’s time to stop blaming Brexit

What does a spike in hate crime, a slump in sterling, supermarket price hikes, rising inflation and a squeeze on living standards have in common? The answer is simple, according to some: Brexit is to blame. But it’s time to stop pointing the finger at Brexit, says the Sun, which argues in its editorial that the vote to leave in last year’s referendum has ‘wrongly copped the blame for every negative development since’. Now that it has emerged that inflation has ‘outstripped’ pay for the first time since 2014, the same thing is happening. It’s true, the Sun admits, that the slump in Sterling is pushing up prices. But there’s also another reason for low wages: ‘the huge number of EU migrants prepared to work for less than Brits.’. No one can blame these people for ‘coming to Britain to improve their lot’. Yet when as many as  250,000 eastern Europeans work in manufacturing alone, one thing is inevitable, the Sun says: national pay growth will be cut.