It's not that we told you so but we did tell you so

We did suggest that this would happen:

Post-Brexit curbs on immigration are proving a boon for restaurant workers as wage increases outstrip the national average.

Pay for staff in the hospitality sector has risen by 9.5pc – compared with the national average of 6.6pc – over the last year, new research shows.

Actually, we took to the pages of the national press to insist that this would happen:

Brexit is about to give us a problem with this, though. Karl Marx was right: wages won’t rise when there’s spare labour available, his “reserve army” of the unemployed. The capitalist doesn’t have to increase pay to gain more workers if there’s a squad of the starving eager to labour for a crust. But if there are no unemployed, labour must be tempted away from other employers, and one’s own workers have to be pampered so they do not leave. When capitalists compete for the labour they profit from, wages rise.

Britain’s reserve army of workers now resides in Wroclaw, Vilnius, Brno, the cities of eastern Europe. The Polish plumbers of lore did flood in and when the work dried up they ebbed away again. The net effect of Brexit will be that British wages rise as the labour force shrinks and employers have to compete for the sweat of hand and brow.

It is, of course, entirely possible to argue that you’d prefer the cost of labour to not rise. But that is the same thing as arguing that you want wages to remain low. A higher cost of labour, rising wages, higher incomes, they’re all exactly the same thing.