W ithout an effectively functioning economy, such objectives as “fairness” cannot be realised, and political extremes flourish. What Britain needs to prosper socially and financially in the 2020s is a longer-term strategy for sustainable growth which addresses the country’s deep failings in respect of skills, short-term financial horizons and housing. And, now, those of us who oppose Brexit and economic nationalism generally face the challenge to say how we would improve the functioning of an economy damaged by the financial crisis and then, again, by Brexit. Good economic management will be more critical than ever.

In the late 1960s and 1970s Britain suffered from “stagflation”: rates of inflation well above historic trends and occasionally reaching double figures (leading to a balance of payments crisis under a fixed exchange rate system) combined with slow growth relative to developed-country comparators.