Amazin’ now one else thought of this really:

The problems facing the country do evoke parallels with the immediate post-1945 situation. Moreover, they demand an Attlee-style grasp of the need for bold measures, starting with a vast investment programme founded not on the kind of fiscal rules that imply continued austerity, but on the assumption that sensible investment pays dividends if you take the long view, and are not hidebound by annual budgets and arbitrarily chosen fiscal rules.

The Attlee government knew about the need for regional policy, well described in the memoirs of Douglas Jay, a prominent member of Attlee’s cabinet. Regional policy is now known as “devolution”. Under the auspices of Harvard University and King’s College London, a new report examining the UK’s feeble growth performance argues in favour of a more equitable regional balance, with more power given to local leaders throughout the regions.

It is possible, just, to quibble slightly with this.

As we’ve noted just recently when those local leaders got access to cheap money from the Treasury they spent it on buying commercial real estate at the top of the market and are now all going bust for having done so. National government doing the investing has given us HS2.

That is, getting politics to do the investing seems to violate that “sensible” caveat.

Of course, there are things that can be done:

Lower Thames Crossing planning application becomes UK’s longest ever – at more than 350,000 pages, and costing almost £300m

If we had less idiot government - that is, less government that was idiot and also less government because it is idiot - then we could have more investment and also more productive investment. Which does sound like an excellent idea.

The bold idea we need being, therefore, that we slash government and so free up the economy and investment in it. All of which sounds, to us at least, like a much better plan.