This article follows a common pattern found in critiques of "mainstream" or "orthodox" economics. There are three steps: (1) economists all believe X; (2) X is clearly nonsense; (3) therefore economics is nonsense and needs to be reformed. Like most such critiques it breaks down at step (1). The idea that mainstream economics is a free market ideology ignores the vast swathes of the discipline that investigate what happens when markets fail to deliver socially desirable outcomes. In the academic literature this is the most dynamic and interesting current research agenda while most practising, non-academic, economists are engaged in precisely this kind of endeavour. Would a discipline in the thrall of the oligarchs have produced the New a economics of the Minimum Wage, current advances in behavioural economics or any of the huge literature on, say, involuntary unemployment where government intervention leads to a better equilibrium? Lord Skidelsky mentions capital in the 21st Century but neglects to remind us that Piketty has been feted within the economics profession, published in the leading mainstream journals and tipped as a future Nobel prize winner.

As for blaming economics as a discipline for both the crash and austerity, Lord Skidelsky fails to acknowledge the many economists who argued and continue to argue against the offending policies. Is there a consensus amongst UK macroeconomists on austerity? Certainly not, but it is not the discipline's fault whom policy makers choose to ask for economic advice and which advice they choose to follow.

There are undoubtedly developments in the economics discipline which could be better reflected in the undergraduate curriculum. In a dynamic, developing subject, this will always be the case but dismissing the mainstream as narrow and ideologically driven is wide of the mark and undermines the case for any reform that might legitimately be required.