There are no quick fixes, the Chancellor told MPs on Wednesday afternoon as she built up to the peroration of her spring statement. And in that assessment, she was quite right. Since the financial crisis that almost broke Britain’s banking system and sent the economy into a deep recession more than a decade and a half ago, a succession of chancellors have come to the Commons dispatch box to lay out their plans for healing Britain’s myriad economic ills.
From Labour’s Alistair Darling, his Tory successor George Osborne, through Philip Hammond, Rishi Sunak and, very briefly, Kwasi Kwarteng, to Jeremy Hunt and now back to Labour with Rachel Reeves, their combined efforts have failed to find a cure. They all, in their different ways, talked a good game, their words polished and spun by a phalanx of smart speech writers and political advisers. You could almost believe that things really were getting better when they sat down. But the cold hard truth is, they never were, and they are still not.
