A Certain Potential

As might be expected given that one of its chief spokestwits doesn't know what an average is, the Vote Leave campaign has got into a bit of bother with its figures. The minions of Gove have been jabbering to the effect that turning the EU from our biggest economic partner into our biggest economic rival could result in a windfall of £350 million each and every week for a newly-independent Westminster and its surrounding provinces. This claim roused the suspicions of Norman Lamb, who served as Deputy Conservative doormat in Jeremy Hunt's Department for Health and News Corporation during the Conservative administration of 2010-15, and therefore has some experience of numbers whose perfume seems redolent of a Cameron family tax return. Sure enough, the chair of the UK Statistics Authority confirmed that the £350-million figure was "potentially misleading"; and if there is one thing that Gove, the London Haystack and the strutting Caudillo of the Farage Falange simply cannot abide, it is wasted potential.