Leading businessman John Longworth has hailed Britain’s “bright future” after the FTSE 100 reached an all-time high of 7,106.08 on Wednesday.
Longworth, a former Director-General of the British Chambers of Commerce who “volunteered” to step down after his decision to endorse Brexit was followed by “abusive” messages from David Cameron’s team, told Breitbart London that “the record stock market” was a clear illustration of how “the economy of post-referendum Britain continues to power away”.
The FTSE 100 fell sharply after it became clear that the British public had voted to leave the European Union on June 23rd, a lead story for the BBC, Channel 4 and other mainstream news broadcasters in the immediate aftermath of the referendum. All losses were recovered by June 29th, but this was not given the same prominence as the earlier fall.
“David Cameron and George Osborne briefly scared the markets – but not voters – with their Project Fear tactics,” observed Richard Tice, the real estate tycoon who co-chairs the Leave Means Leave campaign alongside Longworth, “but rational pragmatism soon prevailed.”
Remain supporters, many of whom appeared to derive a certain morbid satisfaction from the stock market’s post-referendum travails, are now attempting to minimise the significance of the index by saying that many top companies on the London Stock Exchange do business outside the UK, and that the rally would look less impressive if measured in US dollars.
Tice told Breitbart that the first point “is destroyed” by the fact that the “much more domestic” FTSE 250 is also up since the referendum, achieving its own all-time high in October.
Breitbart queried the second point with Ewen Stewart, a leading economist who acts as consulting director for the Global Britain think tank, who dismissed it as “absolutely irrelevant to UK investors and pension holders”.
Indeed, reports on the last day of trading before Christmas showed the stock market was already up 730 points since referendum day, a boost for savers worth an estimated £185bn.