In her crucial statement this week, the chancellor would do well to reject the Gradgrind mindset

There are two inconvenient if fundamental truths about Britain’s economic and budgetary stasis. The first: Labour’s ceaseless repetition about its terrible legacy has led its army of critics from left and right almost to dismiss the profundity of our economic plight as political staging. Yet a succession of feckless, intellectually bankrupt Conservative governments really did leave a disastrous mess.

The second: while there must be a determined response, it must be more than regressing to the Gradgrind orthodoxies of the penny-wise, pound-foolish “Treasury brain”. A Labour government must have a credible political vision and some imaginative, progressive ways of finessing the desperate need for more resources for defence, together with repairing our overstretched public services; of boosting growth and raising extra revenue that does not provoke electoral wrath. It’s not just the Labour party and its voters that expect this – so do financial markets, which understand that economic and political credibility are intertwined.