"Britain ended last year as the strongest of the world’s advanced economies with growth accelerating in the six months after the Brexit vote.
Business activity hit a 17-month high last month, meaning that the economy grew by 2.2 per cent last year — more than the six other leading nations, including the US, Germany and Japan."
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/britain-has-worlds-top-economy-after-brexit-rt7j9lccb
Lower exchange rate boosted growth, as expected.
Now, if only the UK can deliver trade agreements with its many friends, all will be well. I hope we can number the EU as a friend, in spite of its bitter resentment at the UK's departure. It was clear that the determination to deliver a federal Europe killed the UK's membership. And Merkel's open door immigration policy from Islamic countries combined with the free movement of people within Europe didn't help.
The notion that racism fuelled Brexit is total balls. Islam is a religion, a culture and a politics, and absolutely not a race. Anyone with any kind of curiosity can see what importing into Europe a mass of believers in Islam has delivered for Germany, Britain, Sweden, Belgium and France. So I agree that Islamophobia contributed. But I don't see hostility to Islam as irrational. It's about self-preservation.
I have no complaint about any other religion. But you have to be dull-witted not to see that Islam and violence appear together wherever they go, whether it be Europe, Africa, Russia, the Middle East, the Far East, or North America. And folks have every right not to want more of it. If we could rewind the clock with foreknowledge, who would have opened the door to immigration from those cultures? Sorry, but my desire to be open-hearted to all people is not as important to me as my wish for my family to be safe and to live in peace. The fact that 85% of Moslems are not sympathetic to terrorism just isn't my problem. It's the 15% which are which makes Moslems unwelcome everywhere. Let Islam have its enlightenment and maybe my appraisal will change. And that of the millions who daren't say it but think it anyway.
| 