Let’s hope it was a throwaway remark in the heat of a tense moment. For Jacob Rees-Mogg’s despatch box suggestion that economists are mere taxis for hire, producing the results that their paymasters demand, was a dangerous stance for the Conservative Party to take.

Asked why the Government had failed to produce an economic impact assessment on Boris Johnson’s new deal, the leader of the House of Commons retorted: “If you ask an economist anything, you will get the answer you want.” At times, we’ve all shared Rees-Mogg’s frustration about the assumptions embedded within the previous government’s Brexit modelling. But such a reckless reply needlessly impugned the integrity of government-employed economists doing their jobs, while sullying the reputation of professionals outside who will provide much-needed analysis of Labour’s wealth-destroying agenda.

True, economists need to be more careful to protect their own reputations. On Brexit, much analysis held up as indisputable by Remainers has been based on highly contestable political assumptions, not economics, usually buried deep within technical appendices. Judgments on what regulatory changes or tariff reductions are politically feasible, how many non-tariff barriers on services will be reduced in future trade negotiations, or guesses about what future politicians will decide on migrant numbers, are fed into models as truths.