It's the PEOPLE, Stupid!

Throughout the Referendum campaign, vast amounts of airtime were given over to the economy. Clearly, the economy is vital - but it serves one purpose only - to ensure the prosperity of the people who are part of it.

We have been getting that wrong. The growth we have seen has been unevenenly distributed, not I suspect through deliberate policy, but rather as a byproduct of the systems we use. The end result however is the same - we have allowed a mindset to develop that the people are there to serve the economy, rather than the other way round. It can take us on a path, unless we're careful, to some latter day version of the workhouse.

This is important. All the indications are that the bigger changes taking place, particularly in technology, will enable the replacement of "complicated" jobs, in finance, law, engineering and the like by intelligent machines. This is probably as welcome as it is inevitable, but raises the question of what happens to people?

The answer, of course, is that …