Good morning, and here’s a riddle to start your day: what needs fuel in its tank, but also has to be balanced? What will turn into a black hole if we don’t fix its roof when the sun is shining? What will max out its credit card if we don’t live within our means?
The answer, of course, is not a motorhome floating through space and brandishing a Visa, but the economy – or, more accurately, the economy as Conservatives think about it. From Margaret Thatcher to Boris Johnson via David Cameron and George Osborne, all of those visions of the limits on the state’s financial firepower are framed by the right. All of them rely on a “common sense” idea so intuitive as to seem like a truism: the amount you have available to spend is strictly constrained by the amount you pay.
