ABSTRACT
Today the question of Britain’s economic performance remains as fascinating as ever. Having undergone its third major recession in the post-war period, the rhetoric of the recovery has emphasised the combination of an expanding economy without the re-emergence of inflation-evidence in the eyes of some that the persistent relative economic decline which spanned more than a century is now firmly in the past. Others, however, argue that progress is largely a chimera created in part by the poor performance of other European economies. On this view, any gains achieved through the economic policies of the last twenty years amount to a belated period of catching up with other major economies and have been bought at the expense of rapidly rising, and possibly unsustainable, levels of inequality. Moreover, it has been argued that the policies have not created the institutions capable of assisting in the generation of sufficient numbers of adequately compensated jobs which would be necessary to bring about a more general increase in prosperity.
