Ideas of exceptionalism and ‘laissez-faire’ policies are still driving economic myths that should be stone dead
There were fateful choices in the autumn of 1931 and the months that followed whose consequences affect us today. The beliefs still current in British exceptionalism – attachment to laissez-faire economics and pursuit of the chimera of global Britain – have their roots in the choices made then, which became embedded in our culture, especially on the right.
Challenging what should be stone-dead myths and reinventing a conception of what Britain can and should be demands understanding our past, the better to escape it.
