Should public utilities be in public hands? I am prepared to see both sides of that argument, especially as some privatised companies – Thames Water, for one – have hardly been great adverts for private enterprise over the years. Monopolistic private companies seem to me to be as bad as monopolistic nationalised ones. If we can’t have competition, then maybe state ownership in some cases is the lesser of the evils.

But Andy Burnham doesn’t want to stop there: he is apparently going to tell the Commons today that public control of utilities is the only way to grow the economy. Really, the public sector, the fount of all economic growth?

What Burnham and the anti-austerity lobby have come to believe is a perversion of Keynsianism

What Burnham and the anti-austerity lobby have come to believe is a perversion of Keynsianism

It is a delusion which is sadly all too common on the Left. It is the underlying belief of the ‘anti-austerity’ movement: cut public........

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