Freedom from Information

Aside from its obvious benefits as regards leaving the country poorer, meaner and stupider, it is arguable that the full advantages of the mainland's forthcoming independence from the Euro-wog yoke have not yet been clearly set out. Her Majesty's Government has consistently refused to release its own assessments of the likely consequences, apparently on the grounds that money isn't everything and that the sunlit uplands will be so transcendentally rah-rah that public rejoicing might fatally exceed the brief period which Mr Churchill deemed fitting for the undisciplined lower classes. Nevertheless, the Government did spaff a few dozens of millions on a Get Ready campaign, and has even thought up a new slogan for the day after withdrawal; the obvious one, Protect and Survive, is presumably being saved for next year. Almost every plucky little yeoman in Britain was exposed to the Get Ready campaign, and some visited the relevant fag-end of the government's website, which informed your correspondent that no preparations were necessary and which was regrettably taciturn about the schedule and quantity of forthcoming financial improvements. Now the pedants at the National Audit Office are complaining that there is little evidence of the public being any better informed, for all the world as if there were still some sort of place in British national policy for evidence and information. A more mature understanding was demonstrated by an expenses claimant for the former Deputy Conservative Party, who praised the campaign as "an expensive propaganda stunt designed ahead of the election to help no one but Boris Johnson stay in Number 10" and thus a soul-mate to all moderates, centrists, decents and sensibles who call Westminster their spiritual homeland.