The UK’s plight needs to be put in the wider context of the history of economic growth and productivity in the big western economies since the end of the second world war. The period to the mid-1970s was a super-boom: trend annual growth in GDP per head was, for example, 4.9 per cent in Italy and 4 per cent in France from 1950 to 1974. The growth was even higher in Japan, but only 2.7 per cent in the UK and 2.4 per cent in the US. Even so, these rates were strong enough to deliver big increases in standards of living. From 1974 to 2007, growth was significantly slower in Japan and the continental European economies. But it remained vigorous. In the UK, it barely slowed, to 2.3 per cent. The same was true in the US.