Brexit is villain in accidental death of the economy | William Keegan

Like characters in Dario Fo's farce, we complain about, but tolerate, the most damaging political scandal of our time

At the beginning of the first Thatcher government (1979-83), the economist John Kenneth Galbraith wrote that Britain was the perfect place to conduct the dubious monetarist experiment recommended by his fellow economist Milton Friedman. This was because although Galbraith (rightly) thought the policy was crazy, British phlegm" would see us through, and the tolerant nation would not take to the streets".

This memory came to mind recently when I was at the revival of that great 1970s classic Accidental Death of an Anarchist. Dario Fo and Franca Rame's farce has been updated by Tom Basden, and is a five-star triumph. The memory was evoked by the central character, the maniac", declaring: Scandal is to society what confession is to the sinner. It's a catharsis [that] fixes nothing: the hostile environments, the sewage in the seas, the peerages for political donors. And what's the result? Do we arrest anyone? Can we change anything? Of course not ... In glorious democracies such as ours, we get to moan about it instead."