Plenty of people believed the “dystopian vision” conjured up by Remainers before the Brexit referendum, says Larry Elliott in The Guardian. The then chancellor, George Osborne, grimly warned of a “DIY recession”, 800,000 job losses, a weaker housing market and a stock market crash. It has now been two years since we left the EU – and “none of it has happened”. Unemployment is lower than it was in 2016 and house prices are higher. “Share prices have risen and until Covid arrived there was no recession.” The “gloomy predictions” continued long after the 2016 vote – that Nissan would quit the UK, that City jobs would be lost to the continent, that Brexit supply chain problems would “mean a turkey-less Christmas”. Again, none of it has come to pass. “The wait for economic meltdown goes on.”

Vladimir Putin has plenty of fans among the world’s strongman leaders, says Gideon Rachman in the Financial Times. Hungarian PM Viktor Orban has said that “Putin has made his country great again”. Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines has described him as a “hero” and his favourite world leader. As Saudi Arabia’s de facto leader Mohammed bin Salman rose to power, advisors noted his “awestruck admiration” for Putin. In the West, Donald Trump’s approval of the Russian leader was “coy” – but less ambiguous was Matteo Salvini, leader of Italy’s hard-right League, who “posed for photos in Red Square wearing a Putin T-shirt”.