Must-Read: Robert Skidelsky: The Conservative Election Manifesto

… the mother of all lies. The Great Recession was caused by the banks. Governments, the Labour government included, by bailing out the banks and continuing to spend, stopped the Great Recession from turning into a Great Depression. Yet practically everyone seems to believe that the Great Recession was manufactured by Gordon Brown. The Conservatives claim that ‘by halving the deficit we have restored confidence to the economy’. This cheerfully ignores the near academic consensus that their deficit-reduction policies over the last 5 years have made the British economy between 5 and 10% smaller than it would have been with more sensible policies…. The Conservative narrative has become the Overton Window of our day, outside of which policies are unthinkable. But sooner or later reality will break in, and what is now unthinkable will become sensible again. But not in this election.