An investigation by the Financial Times has revealed that the creeping nationalisation of the UK economy did not begin when the government found itself forced to take over Northern Rock, but a decade earlier. Two out of three jobs created between 1998 and 2006 have been in sectors dominated by public services: health, education, social work and public administration. Some of these workers – agency nurses, supply teachers and public policy consultants – may legally have private employers, but they depend on the state.

This should lead to a profound reassessment of New Labour’s legacy. Not only does the future have the power to surprise, but under this government, so does the past. At a time when citizens were borrowing and spending – or, more charitably, investing in their homes – the government was fuelling the boom by buying employment growth on the never-never. It concealed the extent of the debt binge with flimsy recalculations of the economic cycle, with politically driven economic forecasts, and with off-balance-sheet finance that would have made Wall Street blush.