Ian Dunt

We had Gordon Brown, who, although he'd really signed up to the kind of Thatcherite orthodoxy in the years leading up to there, had still been educated in Keynesian economics.

He understood what a fiscal stimulus was, which is basically what you've just described.

You know, you've got a crisis of demand in the economy.

People don't want enough stuff.

You've got to stimulate demand by putting money, giving people jobs, building motorways, whatever they'll spend.

They'll buy sandwiches on the way to work.

You get economic activity just running again.

The animal spirits.

It's classic sort of Keynesianism.

He understood all that.

However, domestic political thought started to change because of a change in the Conservative Party at that time.

How so?

Well, up to 2008, the Conservative Party had promised to match Labour's spending plans.

So you had these guys, David Cameron, George Osborne.

They just didn't dare state that they were going to go back to the Thatcher period.

People didn't really want it.

They liked having public services that worked and they liked having a degree of social cohesion and decency to the society.

Right.

Not the old images we had from the Thatcher period of like minors in running battles with the police, you know, on strike and that sense of pulsating hatefulness.

But when the crash came, they split from that previous position and said, no, you know what, we need to cut spending.