The Frenchman whose wild ideas poisoned our politics and economy |
Who broke Britain? Welcome to The i Paper’s new opinion series in which our range of experts tackle this question and identify the individuals whose decisions caused the country’s biggest problems.
• David Cameron: The unlikely villain who casually killed the Conservative Party
• Tony Blair: A sincere deceiver who broke Britain’s trust on migration
• Andrew broke our bond with the monarchy and put the Royal Family at risk
• Dominic Cummings: A human wrecking ball who shows no guilt
• Nigel Farage’s great project is to destroy the country he claims to love
Britain’s economy is broken. For 20 years, households across the country have seen no meaningful increase in living standards. What was previously the force driving our society forward – the certainty of parents that their children would live a more prosperous life than them – has shattered.
This is all due to our failure to secure economic growth since the financial crisis of 2008, and our seeming acceptance of managed decline as a fact of life. In short, Britain is broken because we haven’t grown for two decades.
When thinking of who is responsible for this, it is easy to place blame on those who have pulled the levers of power. The occupants of the Treasury: Gordon Brown, George Osborne, Rishi Sunak or Rachel Reeves. Perhaps the governors of the Bank of England, or the technocrats at the Office for Budget Responsibility.
But one economic thinker, more than any other, has allowed his beliefs to pervade the corridors of power and shape the agenda in his own image. Unfortunately, it wasn’t Adam Smith. Nor was it Milton Friedman.
The man who broke Britain is Thomas Piketty.
Since the publication of his 2013 global bestseller Capital in the Twenty-First Century, the French economist’s worldview has dominated our........