KEIR STARMER is licking his lips in Liverpool today at the prospect of a Sterling crisis and a one-way ticket to election victory.
Labour MPs and their trade union paymasters are preparing for government within a year.
And wobbly Conservatives are wetting themselves as they wait for the currency exchange markets to open this morning.
But hang on! The whole point about Britain’s elastic, free-floating currency is its capacity to absorb shocks.
According to one tried and trusted expert, a temporary fall against the US dollar could even be a good thing.
“It will make our exports cheaper and force us to rethink our energy supply policy,” says Professor Patrick Minford. “Sun readers will be among the winners.”
Unlike the rigid euro, the Pound is not a fixed commodity. It floats on the tide and rolls with the punches.
Even dropping below the dollar would not necessarily mean disaster.
After six years of dither and paralysis, Brexit Britain is wide open for business, trade and investment — and on the way to a new age of prosperity. War on The Blob has just begun.
Rose-tinted optimism? No, Prof Minford is the hard-nosed Thatcherite whose blueprint for the 1980s helped deliver three sensational decades of unbroken economic growth.
The Professor of Applied Economics is a world-renowned analyst with a reputation for unerringly accurate forecasts.
Thanks to Friday’s tax-cutting, red tape-slashing Budget bombshell, in which he played a part, UK plc is primed to bounce out of recession faster than the inflexible EU or the overblown US.
“Britain is not a fixed-rate economy,” he tells me. “I’m quite calm about the Pound.
“The last time we tried to intervene on exchange rates was a complete disaster.”
Minford was talking about September 1992, when Britain was humiliatingly ejected from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism.
The boom that followed ran and ran until the 2008 global economic crash.
Since then we have been living on artificially low interest rates and digitally enhanced borrowing.
The oomph drained from our trading instincts.
Minford blames 12 years of “do-little” Cameron–Clegg coalition, pro-Brussels Theresa May, “green-obsessed” Boris Johnson and tax-hiking Rishi Sunak.
“It has been painful to watch as they did nothing for the economy and just kept raising taxes,” says Mrs Thatcher’s former guru.
Sun readers will benefit from the Trussonomics tax revolution and cheaper energy from fracking and North Sea oil, he adds.
“I think we are now looking like a very attractive place to do business in.”
Minford predicts growth will rise above two per cent by next year, a sharp increase on recent times, with inflation falling faster than expected before Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng’s Friday bombshell.
That will translate into higher wages, lower tax, plenty of jobs for those who want to work — and welfare incentives, or cuts, for the one in four who don’t.
By contrast, the EU and US risk being plunged into deep and damaging recession by a “vicious” squeeze on interest rates.
“This will create a whiplash effect as countries like France and Spain push back against this vicious tightening,” he says.
Minford has no time for leftwingers and faint-hearted Tories who claim Truss is cutting taxes for the rich at the expense of the poor.
Indeed he believes our newly streamlined economy, plus a war on red tape, will leave EU states eating our dust.
And why would voters back Labour’s promise to restore the abolished 45 per cent tax rate — imposed by Gordon Brown in his last days as PM to spite incoming Tories?
“People are not stupid,” says the Prof. “They know we rely on the rich to bankroll growth. They want a business-friendly UK creating good jobs.”
But with only two years until polling day, is it too little too late?
“Time is short,” admits Minford.
“But time was short for Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s. We can win this election on the basis of results. The proof will be in the pudding.”
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