Douglas Murray Douglas Murray

This government’s greatest failure is economic

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‘The main job of a government is to ensure that the economics don’t go wrong.’ So argued an economist friend of mine to me many years back. And I must admit that my first response was uncommonly cynical. ‘Well, you would say that, wouldn’t you?’ I replied. ‘You’re a political economist.’ It is to be expected. In the same way a military-defence type might say that the most vital job of government is to be able to defend these islands and project military force. Or Lulu Lytle might explain that the most important thing in government is to get the interiors right.

But as the years have gone by, I have realised that my cynicism was wrong and my friend’s argument was true. Relatively dull subject though it is, it probably is the primary duty of government to get the economics right. Because when the economics go wrong, everything else goes wrong in very short order.

At the moment the economics seem to be going very wrong indeed. It isn’t just the tax hikes, the inflation and rising cost of living. There is also the old 2008 problem — which is that assuming you do have any money left over, where do you put it? The stock market is falling. Crypto seems to be tanking. You can’t keep money in the bank because inflation eats away at it. Some hereditary part of me still has a preference for hiding any spare cash under the mattress. But many economists advise against this too. Still, I notice that this 2008-style talk is once again every-where. The economics are starting to bite.

This seems to have come as a surprise to many people. Not least to portions of the media that have spent the past two years pretending you can shutter the world’s economies, borrow like crazy and then drive straight off again, like someone switching cars after a crash in Grand Theft Auto.

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