Rapid Response

Even in the Not Awfully Bright Party, where cerebral gravity is so light that a penny can take several decades to descend when it drops at all, a few vague misgivings are starting to surface about the wisdom of turning our biggest trading partner into an economic rival purely for the sake of keeping out the wogs. The chair of the manufacturing company William Cook, who apparently prefers employing people to sacking them despite being a major Conservative Party donor, has said he will withdraw his support if Britain is taken out of the single market. He also admitted to employing immigrants, presumably in order to avoid being named and shamed by the Clegg-pledging race-baiter Amber Rudd; and obliquely noted the fact that the Leave campaign in the referendum was essentially a pack of lies: "the amount of money that we contribute to the European Union was always portrayed by the leavers as a gross sum without anything in return." And all it took was six months of patriotic drift and the resignation of a major civil servant. Never let it be said that the captains of British industry are slow to command events.