As well as being notable for the first spring statement, last week was also notable for being the tenth anniversary of the last pre-crisis budget. For readers under 30, pre-crisis refers to a time when earnings and funding for public services were rising. We expected and usually got economic growth at 2 per cent a year and more. If you had savings you could get interest on them.

At that moment in March 2008, months before the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the most dramatic loss of national income in modern history, Alistair Darling, the chancellor at the time, felt able to tell the country that “because of the changes made by this government to entrench stability and to increase the flexibility and resilience of