The Liberal Democratic party has had 54 years to get things right. That is enough. Japan this week enters the final week of an election campaign that officially started on August 18 but, in fact, has been rumbling on since mid-2007, when the opposition Democratic party of Japan grabbed control of the weaker upper house. Since then, the LDP has struggled to achieve much at all, its every move checked by an opposition that has begun to scent the real possibility of power. On Sunday, Japan’s electorate will have the chance to put the LDP, which has ruled Japan for all but 11 months since 1955, out of its misery. It should take it.

To be fair, the conservative LDP has not done too badly. For its first 35 years in office – the odd scandal and its overly conservative social instincts aside – it did a pretty good job. Japan’s economy, virtually destroyed in the war, became the envy of the world. Throughout its spectacular growth, the country maintained its egalitarianism and social cohesion. It even eventually got round to cleaning up the environment. Japan’s powerful bureaucrats take much of the credit. But the LDP-dominated political system, which helped spread wealth nationwide, played its part. That changed with the burst of the bubble in 1990 and the end of cold war certainties. The LDP, wedded to export-led economic catch-up and huddling under the US security blanket, has floundered on both counts. It has only managed to hold on to power thanks to voter inertia, tactical coalitions and, for six years from 2001, Junichiro Koizumi, a showman politician who persuaded the electorate that his sclerotic party stood for change.