Daniel Hannan, Ex-President (Oriel), is Conservative MEP for South East England and blogs at hannan.co.uk

There is usually a time lag in politics. Pundits carry on citing obsolete statistics for years. Even when they catch up with the facts, they are slow to adjust their world-view to them.

How often, for example, do you hear politicians and journalists claiming that ‘half our exports’ – or even ‘the majority of our exports’ – go to the EU?