Ian Dunt

So as soon as there was an opportunity, they reverted back to the old Thatcherite metaphor, which is deeply compelling to many people, which is that a nation's finances are the same as household finances.

So if you're going through a rough old time, you need to sit down at the kitchen table and say, you know what, we've got to cut our spending.

in order to make ends meet, and that's how you keep the roof up.

Mostly because in a household, you can't borrow your way towards stimulating demand.

That's just not a thing that means anything.

The metaphor breaks down completely.

But in a nation, you can borrow to stimulate demand.

In a nation also, you can borrow at very low interest rates at certain times and use that to build infrastructure that will allow you to encourage growth later on.

Let's say to create train systems that run much, much faster, that allow for much greater connectivity between towns.

And one of the problems that Britain has is that outside of London,

the transport infrastructure between towns, let alone the big cities as well, you know, it's very, very poor indeed.

And that makes it much harder for people to get jobs where they should be.

It makes it much harder for us to put talent where it's meant to be.

And that hurts you economically.

Now, we could have at that point borrowed on basically 0% interest rates.

The market was basically at the door of government, smashing on the door saying, I'm begging you to borrow money from us right now.

It was free to hire money at that time.

And yet the whole political debate...

just went towards austerity.

Now, that forced Labour's hands in the last two years of power to adopt ever more sort of right-wing positions.