LizTrusshas opined that economic policies over the last 20 years have not delivered economic growth. This takes us back to the second Blair Government. I’ll leave to economic historians the detail of whether Truss is correct, although the wider issues of the decline of British capitalism(much debated) and productivity are important.
However in Truss’s 20 year period we can find the world economic crisis of 2008/9. There was not consensus in the UK about what to do unless I misunderstood Cameron and Osborne. From 2010 the Government policy was one of austerity- in essence making the less well off pay for economic crisis while the rich protected their wealth.
The only economist Truss quoted was the veteran Tory Patrick Minford. I got caught in a research byway checking whether Minford and E P Thompson had ever crossed paths. It appears not but in the process I came across this line in the Making of the English Working Class:
Notions as to the traditional stupidity of the British ruling class are dispelled by familiarity with the Home Office papers.
Thompson was referring to the Luddite period of the 1810s but Truss seems to fit the mould 200 years on
Leave a Reply