. In any case, the Party recently shelved its 'Green Prosperity Plan'. Meanwhile, the regulatory blob remains resolutely risk-averse, sticking rigidly to the European Union's excessive cautiousness, perhaps for fear it will get blamed for anything that goes wrong, while receiving little credit for the dynamism that lighter touch rules-making might unleash. Many of the well heeled, older members of our society are relaxed about the staggering rise in property prices ; some actively support Nimbyism. And there are too many FTSE 100 companies with a cosy relationship to the Government, which are content to make modest but steady profits in markets where the barriers to new entrants are unacceptably high. Our economic model is broken. Wages and productivity have stagnated. The national debt is enormous. Taxes and public spending are going up. Intergenerational inequality is widening. It is true that some of the complaints made by the smashed avo){kind=link}
We should not be surprised that young people are fleeing high-tax, low-growth Britain
Roll out the bunting. Cut the cake. And break open the champagne. It turns out that, despite all the predictions of its imminent implosion, the British economy is still growing.
Over the last quarter it managed to expand by a mighty 0.2pc, and by 0.5pc in an unexpectedly strong June.
But hold on. In a country where net migration is running at more than 600,000 a year that figure is surely cause for concern not celebration.
If our headcount is increasing by 150,000 per quarter, that would be equivalent to roughly 0.22pc of the total population (not to mention increases in the native population), meaning GDP per capita may in fact have fallen.