John Marriott: The UK’s latest ‘Dash for Growth’ – ‘Déjà vu all over again’?
The US baseball star, ‘Yogi’ Berra , was also a famous perpetrator of malapropisms. One of the most repeated was probably; “It’s déjà vu all over again”. Well, that was how I personally felt when I looked at the Truss/Kwateng modern reworking of the famous Anthony Barber ‘dash for growth’ of 1970 to 1973. Barber had been unexpectedly handed the Chancellorship of the Exchequer in July 1970 following the sudden death after barely a month in office of the much respected Iain Macleod.
One of biggest sectors affected over those four years was the housing market, where, with demand far outstripping supply and with mortgages far easier to obtain, prices, like oil, quadrupled, as we found out to our cost when I and my wife returned home in 1974 after four years living and working abroad.
Back in 2012 the Chancellor added his name as well as that of other up and coming young Tory free marketeers, including our new PM, to a book, ambitiously titled ‘Britannia Unchained’, that included the comment; “Once they enter the workplace, the British are among the worst idlers in the world”. The theory of ‘trickle down economics’ is that some of the money given to those at the top will find its way down to those at the bottom.
So, what do we do now? They say that history keeps repeating itself. On the other hand, perhaps we should cross everything and hope that, if things really do go belly up, the Officers of the 1922 Committee might come knocking on the PM’s door sooner rather than later. And then there’s always Keir Starmer and his New Labour Mark Two, who still reckon they alone have the answer and who appear at the moment to have a comfortable lead in the opinion polls. Even the IMF is making worried noises.
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