Conventional commentators have been horrified by the British government’s estimate of public sector net borrowing of 12.4 per cent of gross domestic product for this financial year. Even if you believe that the deficit will decline to 5.5 per cent by 2013-14 this will not prevent the public sector net debt from climbing to reach 76 per cent of GDP by that year, according to official projections. Never mind that the debt ratio was far higher not only after and between the two world wars, but in the supposedly virtuous mid-Victorian period. Never mind the historian Lord Macaulay’s mockery of the debt obsession. This is clearly far from what the Labour government intended when it came to office in 1997 full of talk of “prudence for a purpose”.

How has this deterioration occurred? There are two deeply unconvincing explanations. There is the opposition Conservative accusation that Gordon Brown took leave of his senses and suddenly went on an ideologically driven spending spree. Then there is the opposite plea that the British leader was virtuously delivering “Labour investment” as opposed to “Tory tax cuts” when he ran into an international financial storm.