Ian Dunt

It was conservatism that faced down, you know, the NHS and the BBC and the miners and the trade unions.

And that sense of thumping, triumphant conservatism, they were born in, and they never really lost it.

They were prepared to say things like, yeah, we'll match Labour spending.

Just in the same way that Labour was prepared to say all the Thatcherite things they needed to say to get into power.

But they didn't really believe it.

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.