Over the years in the UK, “the economy” has become the central obsession of politicians. Not education or healthcare, not aspiration or a better life for “hardworking families”. So important is “the Economy” that politicians work tirelessly to cede all control of it: to multinational corporations and other assorted rentiers, Ciry spivs, and, of course, technocrats. The same people more or less who over the last 40 years drove “the Economy” into the ground.

These politicians and their highbrow friends in academia and the media then puzzle about widespread disengagement with politics and the rise of populism