Early last month, Andy Haldane, chief economist at the Bank of England, blamed “irrational behaviour” for the failure of the BoE’s recent forecasting models.

The failure to spot this irrationality had led policymakers to forecast that the British economy would slow in the wake of last June’s Brexit referendum. Instead, British consumers have been on a heedless spending spree since the vote to leave the European Union; and, no less illogically, construction, manufacturing, and services have recovered.