One blunt heckler has revealed just how much our economists are failing us | Aditya Chakrabortty

A booming Britain? Whose GDP do we mean, when the wealth gains of the past decade have all been in London and the south-east?

There's a lady I've been thinking about for the past few days, even though we've never met. She's the central character in a true story told by the Europe expert Anand Menon. He was in Newcastle just before the referendum to debate the impact of Britain leaving the EU. Invoking the gods of economics, the King's College London professor invited the audience to imagine the likely plunge in the UK's GDP. Back yelled the woman: "That's your bloody GDP. Not ours."

Subtle and learned this was not. But in all the squawking over the past few days about what's wrong in economics and with the economy, her brutally simple criticism is closer to the mark than are most of the pundit class.

Related: Economists have completely failed us. They're no better than Mystic Meg | Simon Jenkins

Cameron's legacy will be that there is no such thing as an economy