Let's hear it for Larry again

The sainted L Elliott, sole Bexit voice in a swamp of  Remainer luvvies at the Gradinu, strikes a note of reason. In a piece tucked away on the website with yesterday's dateline, Elliott says that:

Britons seem relatively relaxed in the face of Brexit apocalypse 

Despite predictions of gloom from the Treasury and Bank, the public remains optimistic

Quoting some (debatable as ever) economic 'facts' of his own, Elliott argues that:

Last week’s survey of manufacturing and retail sales from the CBI were both solid, unemployment was last lower in early 1975, and the public finances smashed expectations last month with the biggest July surplus in almost two decades...While not exactly booming, the UK grew faster than the eurozone in the second quarter and is doing a lot better than the Treasury predicted before the EU referendum. There has been no collapse in house prices, no 500,000 increase in unemployment, no two-year recession...Inflation has started to come down because the impact of sterling’s fall has faded, and this has resulted in gently rising real incomes...Unemployment has continued to fall – it is now below 4% – and there are plenty of job vacancies. Most people who want a job can find one, even if it is not the sort of job they want, with the hours they want, at the pay rates they want...just as there have been companies threatening to leave the UK in the event of a no-deal Brexit there have been high-profile examples – such as Google and Apple – of companies announcing plans to expand in Britain...The assumption these multinational companies are making is that Britain is not going to crash out of the EU next March because eventually a deal will be done. Financial markets think the same, putting the chances of no deal at 10%.

Only the policy wonks are interested anyway. For example, we can suspect a pretty cool reaction to the latest scare in the Guradina's lead article quoting K Starmer on a 'legal vacuum' threatened by a hasty and ill-prepared no deal.

For Elliott:

Interest in, and awareness of, political developments is much less than imagined. People tune in just before elections, make up their minds based – to a considerable extent – on how well they and their families are faring, vote, and then tune out again...Clearly, it makes sense to be prepared for all Brexit outcomes, but the public has yet to take seriously the more lurid warnings of apocalypse to come...Expert forecasting is discredited. Life is a bit better than it was a year ago. There is still an expectation that London and Brussels will orchestrate a political fix.

The whole thing indicates the limits of activist ideological efforts in the face of mundane experience, which is both good and bad of course. Banging on and on does seem ineffective if not counterproductive. The piece also challenges the alleged rational kernel to Remainer fears, and emphasises the symbolic significance of it all for them. There was much derision for the symbolic aspects of Leave, its nostalgia for Merrie England and the like, but the real symbolic justice warriors are Remainers. 

The EU symbolises something real for them, but also something that has to be repressed and disguised as rational, with increasing desperation. My growing suspicion, having patiently persued a lot of Remainer stuff, is that it symbolises just an agreeable aspirational metropolitan 'Home Counties' lifestyle based on social distinction that Remainers do not want to see upset in the slightest way. Symbolic alliances are imagined with similar class fractions in European capitals.