We shall soon be celebrating eleven years of New Labour. There was a long honeymoon period as the government was seen as a huge improvement on the sleazy old Conservatives. And being on the upwards side of the economic cycle, it looked as if Labour's policies were doing a good job, a success which Labour was not slow to claim as its own. And so, without any checks put in place to deal with it, the cycle moved on to its path of boom-to-bust, the point we have now reached, pretty much on schedule. Is the government to blame? Had there been a Conservative or Liberal Democrat government in power, things would have turned out much the same. Moreover, any measures to prevent the boom-and-bust would have had to be put in place by 2003. When Labour was elected, Gordon Brown became Chancellor of the Exchequer, and followed policies framed by his advisor, Ed Balls. Those policies, and the assumptions underlying them, were set out by Ed Balls in an article published in the Observer around 199...
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