Nick Macpherson (now Lord Macpherson) came out as a proponent of the land tax (AGR/LVT) at a Resolution Foundation conference in London in October 2018. But his advocacy of the policy over three decades at HM Treasury, where he was latterly the chief civil servant, was met by his colleagues with universal derision.

Which explains why Blair and Brown were never going to investigate counter-cyclical policy options pre-2008. Their preference was for the damage to be borne by the British people: they would be condemned to suffer austerity …still on-going a decade later!

And who, exactly, will bear responsibility for the next devastating bust post-2026?