If he can't get a basic fact about the pound's history right, why should the public believe what he says about the future post-Brexit?

BORIS Johnson is the populist figurehead of the Leave campaign in Britain's upcoming EU referendum. His jokey manner was appealing enough to Londoners that he was elected mayor twice (although admittedly he was running against Ken Livingstone). But he has acquired a reputation for bluster rather than fact-checking. Some of his errors might not seem serious; the little jokes about children with balloons and tea bag recycling are about trivial subjects. But they are aimed at creating the public perception that the EU is a vast edifice of mindless regulation. And repeating things that are not true, when they can be easily checked, is a worrying sign. When it comes to the future of Britain outside the EU, it is of course perfectly reasonable to argue that it could prosper, although most experts say the effects will be detrimental. Infacts.org, a pro-EU website, has its own webpage about Mr Johnson's errors, but he may well argue that some of these errors are differences of interpretation. Part of the frustration of the British public is that they want facts but it is impossible to create objective facts about the hypothetical situations that will occur after June 23rd. All we can have are forecasts, and forecasts are often wrong.

But you can have facts about the past. So your blogger choked on his nightly cocoa when Mr Johnson said, on last night's BBC Ten O'Clock News (around 14 minutes in), that:

I would remind you that everybody said the pound would fall as a result of our leaving the ERM and on the contrary the pound strengthened. And interest rates were cut.

He's right that rates were cut. But as someone who was writing about the crisis at the time, the statement about the pound was contrary to my memory.