DAILY MAIL COMMENT: The REAL fear that hangs over Europe

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Forget the hysteria of Project Fear, much of it already discredited just three months after the vote.

Today, a far more real threat hangs over the UK and the rest of Europe than any of the fevered fantasies regarding the risks of Brexit dreamed up by George Osborne and his fellow scaremongers.

For as former chancellor Lord Lamont points out, the eurozone's banking system is at risk of buckling under the weight of bad debts – not just in struggling Italy and Greece, but in mighty Germany too.

Deustche Bank has lost more than half its value in the past year as it struggles to cope with low interest rates and sluggish growth

So alarming is the crisis that shares in Deutsche Bank, the country's biggest, yesterday plunged further to one-tenth of their value in the summer of 2007.

True, the immediate cause of the panic is a £10billion fine imposed on the bank by an American justice system that often appears to discriminate viciously against foreign-owned firms (including BP, which suffered £50billion penalties after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico).

But the underlying reason for Deutsche Bank's weakness – and that of most of the continent's banks – is the eurozone's failure to follow Britain's painful example in rescuing and recapitalising its financial system after the credit crunch.

Therein lies a bitter irony for Angela Merkel: after refusing to allow the Greek and Italian governments to bail out their banks and restructure their debts, for fear of undermining the sacred one-size-fits-all euro, she finds herself hamstrung over rescuing her own financial sector.

Isn't this the curse of the EU writ large? With countries forbidden to act in their national interests, stagnation sets in – and everyone suffers.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel had ruled out a government rescue of the troubled bank

Of course, even post-Brexit Britain can't escape damage from the crisis afflicting our European trading partners.

But on Monday, the chief executive of Germany's giant publishing house, Axel Springer, predicted that in three to five years we will emerge better off than continental Europe, with a 'talent-orientated' migration system and freedom from EU rules making us a magnet for foreign investors.

With every month the sclerotic eurozone postpones reform, it becomes more likely his prophecy will come true – underlining yet again the wisdom of the British people in refusing to be cowed by Project Fear.

Football's false idols

How professional football has changed since Sir Stanley Matthews and his fellow heroes played for top clubs at £5 a week (cut to £3 during the summer break).

Whether Sam Allardyce's forced departure was too harsh is open to question. The fact is, however, that the England manager appears to have been caught angling for a £400,000 deal with unscrupulous businessmen and offering tips on how to circumvent FA rules on financial investment in players.

But if he is a bad apple, he is certainly not the only one in a game corrupted by big money from top to bottom.

Allardyce departs just 67 days after he was appointed Three Lions boss - he only managed his country in one match

Club boardrooms are full of crooks and chancers, eager for a cut of £1billion TV rights. Meanwhile, multi-millionaire players set an appalling example of greed, selfishness, prima donna vanity and sexual incontinence to their young fans.

Apart from the City, is there any area of national life that more graphically illustrates the truth of St Paul's warning: 'The love of money is the root of all evil'?

For 27 months, after South Yorkshire police staged a dramatic swoop on his home for the benefit of a BBC helicopter camera crew, Sir Cliff Richard lived with the nightmare of being publicly accused of child abuse. Now that the 75-year-old singer has finally been cleared, is it too much to hope that police and our national broadcaster will never collude again in a stunt that would shame a totalitarian state?