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"Very few leave supporters voted to be poorer".

Yes, Mr Ball, this phrase has become a new mantra for EU loyalists. In its more demotic form ("No one voted to be poorer") it was the front page headline of last week's New European. As Dr Johnson once pointed out, "poor" and "poorer" are words with a multitude of meanings, depending on the speaker. Yet I'm sure you'll agree that in this world people do very often vote to be "poorer". When one gets married and has children it is, as often as not, a vote to be poorer. When a middle-class liberal votes Labour at a general election he is, for all he knows, voting to be poorer. When a nation undertakes the burdens and sacrifices of a just war it is voting to be poorer - and maybe something worse. When in the 1950s and 60s some of the former member states of the British Empire opted for independence they willingly accepted the possibility of being poorer. So what does this slogan amount to? In one sense it's a truism: of course we Brexiteers didn't "vote to be poorer" because that wasn't the question we were asked. But I don't know anyone who didn't vote in the full knowledge that the economy (i.e. the country's and his/her own personal one) might well take a turn for the worse in the event of a Leave victory. Fortunately that didn't happen. And certainly such considerations wouldn't affect my vote in any future referendum on the same question. Are you suggesting that Remainers would switch sides if they could be assured they'd suffer no personal material detriment by leaving the EU?