Paying by instalments

Food prices are growing at their fastest in the past four years, going up another 4% and adding another £140 to the average family's annual grocery bill. So far Brexit has cost the average worker a week's pay in reduced earnings and inflation. The LSE has calculated that overall household costs have gone up by £400 due to inflation since the referendum.

GDP growth is predicted to stay well below 2%  for the next five years - the first time in recent history - which will keep us at the bottom of the G7 growth league table. In contrast, the EU has seen a surge in business activity, with manufacturers in particular celebrating the best month in nearly twenty years.

The Institute of Fiscal Studies predicts that it will be another twenty years before real wages start to rise again - and forty until our national debt falls back to normal levels. That's the positive view - assuming there isn't a recession in that time. The good news is that the Resolution Foundation and the Office for Budget Responsibility are a bit less gloomy, predicting only ten years of falling living standards.

The UK's tribulations parallel those of Japan over the past twenty years. Their problems also began with a debt-fuelled real estate bubble bursting in 1991. Wages flat-lined, banks weren't lending, businesses weren't investing. Meanwhile the population was ageing, reducing the number of people earning, and those that were earning were saving rather than spending.

Although we are still spending, the spending is paid for by borrowing so it can't go on for much longer. Furthermore, the Japanese government eventually lifted themselves out of the economic mire by cutting interest rates to the bone to discourage saving. We are already just about as low as it is possible to go.

The Brexit cheerleaders demand everyone is positive, but there is a difference between being positive and denying reality. We will get a bit more sovereignty and a different colour for our passports, but we have to be prepared for paying the price of these.