READERS of the economic tea leaves in the post-Brexit vote world could have been excused for rattling the cup in its saucer this week in growing trepidation of what comes next. One of the most eye-catching features this week was a relatively low-profile survey from the Institute of Directors (IoD), showing business leaders’ confidence about the UK economy plunged last month.

It adds to evidence that the understandably pragmatic brave faces put on the UK electorate’s vote to leave the European Union by many in the business world - which looked from the outset to be somewhat forced - are really slipping now. It seems a bit like watching a metamorphosis from one to another of Mr Men creator Roger Hargreaves’ characters. Probably Mr Brave, rather than Mr Happy, to Mr Miserable.

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Many in the business community seemed quietly dismayed in the immediate aftermath of the Brexit vote. However, there now seems to be a growing sense of disillusionment and probably an increased willingness to speak up more loudly on the obvious economic woes arising from Brexit.

This might in part reflect the proximity of Chancellor Philip Hammond’s Autumn Statement.

The business community always tends to lobby hard for help ahead of any Autumn Statement or Budget.

However, the increasingly down-in-the-mouth expression of many in business appears more fundamentally to reflect their awareness of what Brexit will bring.

This awareness has probably always been there. However, the dreaded day seems to be drawing nearer in terms of the triggering of Article 50 to begin the formal two-year European Union exit process. And, crucially, the mood music is like those tension-building tunes in a horror movie.

While the economic tea leaves might justify a nervous rattle of cup in saucer, the ramped-up rhetoric in the wake of the Brexit vote and following Donald Trump’s US Presidential election victory is sufficiently scary to send the crockery falling and smashing on the floor.

In particular, the emerging railing on both sides of the Atlantic by Brexit and Trump supporters against what is being referred to as the “liberal elite” really does ring alarm bells. It certainly seems to mark a whole new level of intolerance as the volume dials on jingoism are turned up to eleven.

The whole “elites” spin during the Brexit and Trump campaigns, whether applied to politics, business, and even more bizarrely at times to the media, was meaningless nonsense anyway. But the attachment of the word “liberal” as a derogatory term certainly seems to represent another lurch for the worse. What is the alternative? Not liberal?

It is interesting to note the plunge in business leaders’ confidence about the UK economy was measured by the IoD shortly after all the loudly intemperate talk about the whole Brexit issue at the Conservative Party’s annual conference in early October. Sterling plummeted last month, as the party conference rhetoric raised fears of “hard” Brexit, in which the UK loses free access to the European single market.

Jeremy Peat, visiting professor at the University of Strathclyde’s International Public Policy Institute, noted last month that Conservative politicians were “making it ever clearer that they are prepared to forego access to the single market in favour of a severe reduction in immigration”.

Fears of “hard” Brexit have not dissipated since, and they do not look like doing so any time soon. They may well intensify. International ratings agency Standard & Poor’s declared last Friday that a “hard” Brexit now looked like the most likely outcome for the UK.

Next week’s Autumn Statement is likely to be focused on measures to mitigate the detrimental economic impact of Brexit. There has been much talk that Mr Hammond might rein in predecessor George Osborne’s failed austerity policies. However, whatever it might be the Chancellor would like to attempt to combat the Brexit damage, his options would seem to be limited.

PricewaterhouseCoopers warned this week that the UK faced a danger in the wake of the Brexit vote of a public borrowing overshoot of more than £100 billion over the five fiscal years to 2020/21, compared with the Office for Budget Responsibility’s forecast ahead of the EU membership referendum.

The accountancy firm forecasts Scotland, already hit hard by the oil and gas sector’s woes, will see employment fall next year, as its growth halves to 0.9 per cent following the Brexit vote. PwC predicts UK growth will slow from around two per cent this year to 1.2 per cent in 2017 as business investment drops as a result of uncertainty caused by the vote to leave the EU.

These downbeat projections chime with the IoD survey findings.

Worryingly, another survey published this week, by Bank of Scotland, signalled growth of Scotland’s private sector economy slowed to a crawl in October, while firms’ costs surged at the fastest pace for more than five years on the back of sterling’s Brexit vote-induced plunge. There looks to be plenty of inflation misery ahead for companies and hard-pressed consumers alike.

Paul Brewer, an Edinburgh-based partner of PwC, noted the firm had seen the effect of “planning uncertainty” triggered by the Brexit vote on investment decisions among clients.

“They just don’t have confidence,” he said, highlighting businesses’ desire to see greater certainty “before they press the button on significant investments”.

That is before we even get to the triggering of Article 50.

It is difficult to see anything that is going to alleviate this uncertainty, for the better, any time soon, especially given the inescapable notion that Prime Minister Theresa May and her Government are still without anything even vaguely resembling a credible plan.