Yet Brown didn't do this alone. Most of our political classes have been complicit in this historic policy error. The UK's mainstream parties, having finally admitted our fiscal situation is desperate, have only recently stopped competing on the basis of who can spend more. Public discourse is now starting, very slowly, to recognise that we actually need to spend and borrow much less. But the politicians still claim, sotto voce, that a debt burden equal to 100pc of GDP "isn't all that bad".