At the end of last week, the yield on ten year UK gilts (government bonds) sunk to its lowest level ever – just 1.24pc.

Even in the depths of the financial crisis, when for UK investors gilts seemed the only haven from the storm, or later when the Bank of England was buying up a third of the national debt through its quantitative easing programme, they didn’t fall as low as this. Never before has the UK government been able to borrow quite so cheaply.

To campaigners for Brexit, this looks reassuringly like a vote of confidence in the UK, or at least a sign that the sky won’t fall in if Britain votes to leave the EU.

In his blog, John Redwood, the uber-eurosceptic MP and one time government minister, wrote: “It is particularly noteworthy that as the chances of Brexit have risen in the polls and in the betting, so the cost of UK state borrowing has fallen. This is of course the opposite of the predictions of the Treasury and the US investment banks. They have been wrong again.”

Hmmm. Mr Redwood is making exactly the same mistake as George Osborne, the Chancellor, who likewise used to cite declining gilts yields as a vote of confidence in his fiscal austerity programme. The two things were unrelated then, and they are equally so today when it comes to the economic consequences of Brexit.