At tomorrow’s closing ceremony, the Olympic flag will be handed over to London; the next Olympic Games are to be hosted just down the road from the Undercover Economist. Should we east Londoners expect great things?

A wonderful sporting spectacle is assured, but that will be available to anyone with a television or a tourist visa. Not that the world necessarily queues outside the Olympic stadium: fewer people visited Barcelona in 1992, its Olympic year, than in 1991.