None of this stopped New Labour from echoing Tory boasts that Britain had regained its greatness, with London as the center of the world and its financial district, the City, as the country’s turbocharged engine.
“There’s nothing in the world to rival it,” crowed New Labour’s architect, Peter [now Lord] Mandelson.
And so the national hubris continued. The Conservatives had liberated the City’s energies, and Brown had supposedly abolished boom-and-bust economics, inaugurating a golden era of growth. Warnings about public spending and personal debt were denounced as doom-mongering.
Seldom has a generation of politicians of all persuasions gotten things so stunningly and comprehensively wrong. It’s not just New Labour, but an entire era of national self-delusion that is crashing and grinding to a close.
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