Britain is Europe's economic laggard. Forget Project Fear, this is the reality courtesy of Boris Johnson and his chums

The latest GDP update makes for grim reading

Thanks to Boris Johnson and his chums, consumers are feeling real fear (REUTERS/Toby Melville)

“Project Fear is over,” Boris Johnson bombastically declared, having lied his way to victory in the EU Referendum (I refer, of course, to the £350m a week extra for the NHS Brexit Bus).

And oh how the Brexiteers cheered as, after a brief wobble, the economy continued on trend in the months afterwards. The immediate crash predicted by then Chancellor George Osborne failed to materialise.

What is now becoming evident is that it just took a little longer than expected to be made manifest, as the latest estimate of the UK’s second quarter growth makes clear.

The Office for National Statistics’ update confirmed its first guess, which was that the UK economy produced growth of just 0.3 per cent in the second quarter of the year. That represents a tiny increase on the desperate 0.2 per cent seen in the first quarter. Yearly growth is forecast to come in at a torpid 1.7 per cent.

The numbers serve to underline the sharp slowdown Britain is experiencing.

The EU referendum result, combined with the Government’s disastrous mishandling of things since then, kicked the economy in the guts. Now the pain is filtering through.

As ever, with official figures, there’s a lot going on. Manufacturing, which was supposed to do well thanks to the weak pound, struggled. So did construction (and the staffing crisis that industry fears through the loss of EU labour is only just getting underway).

The dominant services sector did better, preventing the overall number from being very much worse. But here’s what should worry policymakers, and will be worrying those policymakers who don’t simply respond to any event by screaming “yeah Brexit” until they’re hoarse.

The resilience of UK consumers has, in the past, kept things ticking over when they have looked tricky. People such as myself have previously voiced concerns about their willingness to borrow to fund their spending Household debt has been booming, to the extent that the Bank of England is getting worried.

But we can park that for now, because the habits of consumers are changing. No longer are they sufficiently confident to push the boat out like they once were, and it’s not just because Project Fear is back with bells on. They're feeling real pain.

Ministerial tub thumping, and the BBC’s willingness to punt flaky studies at their behest (I refer to the claim by a Cardiff University Prof that hard Brexit would net £135bn extra in trade that my colleague Ben Chu comprehensively debunked), won’t do anything to change that.

Thanks to Brexit, the Pound weakened. As a result of that, prices have started to rise. Wages have failed to increase in step with them, so household budgets are tighter than before.

Combined with the very real fear for the future that people increasingly have - made worse by the way ministers like the lamentable Mr Johnson have been conducting themselves - and more and more of them have (sensibly) decided that their best option is to sit on what money they have.

That wouldn’t matter so much were something to pick up the slack. Business investment would do nicely. Except, of course, that businesses are also sitting on their hands.

With no clear idea of what the UK’s trading relationships will look like in the future - the EU won’t even start talks until the UK starts behaving like a civilised country and properly guarantees the rights of its citizens living here - they too are sitting on their hands. Business investment showed no growth at all, when economists had expected a rise of 0.4 per cent.

Brexit has smashed consumers, and it has smashed businesses, making the UK the slowest growing G7 economy this year. Prior to that self inflicted wound it was the fastest.

In response, the Pound has been plumbing new depths against the Euro. The performance of a nation’s currency is a proxy for how the world thinks its economy is going to perform. Translation: We’re screwed. And it’s only a step or two from being the slow man of Europe to becoming the sick man. That’s the reality, courtesy of Mr Johnson and his chums, who are mostly rich enough not to have to worry.