A period of reflection would be welcome from Mr. Hutton

Being wrong isn’t a problem that’s just the inevitable result of trying to apply 1500 cc of brain pan to a complex universe. What actually matters is how much rethinking is done when reality disagrees with the initial analysis. Which is where Will Hutton is rather letting us all down:

British capitalism seems to be on a roll. A million job vacancies were advertised in July, a new monthly record. Early signs are that unwinding the furlough scheme, now under way, is not going to cause a sharp rise in unemployment.

House prices are rising at the fastest rate since 2004. Public borrowing in July halved compared with last July. Many new companies are being created. Business confidence is rising. The recovery is moving so fast as threats of lockdown recede that the UK on average will get back to pre-pandemic levels of output before the year is out. The chancellor, Rishi Sunak, can indulge his boss’s tantrums; his political position could hardly be stronger.

Sceptics, pretty much everyone, including me, have been confounded.

OK, that’s fair enough. The idea that the British economy required - as Hutton kept insisting - the hands of the wise, like say the wise Will Hutton, on the tiller in order to be able to deal with the cruelties of change turned out to be wrong.

What actually happened is as we marketeers would predict. Exactly when we face uncertainty - which is what change rather is - is when we need to abandon that attempt to plan. Planning being difficult when no one does know what comes next.

So, the initial diagnosis was wrong. At which point the adult, even sciencey, thing to do is work out why the initial theory was wrong. For in those conflicts between hypothesis and reality it is always reality that wins. This being precisely what Hutton doesn’t do:

However, beware. British capitalism has not changed its spots. The open questions are whether the government has learned from this success, understands the nature of the recovery and has a well-designed, flexible strategy to navigate the economy through a near perfect storm of challenges. On the evidence so far, the answers are that it hasn’t and it doesn’t – and is instead given to wishful thinking.

We can pretty much guess what comes next, can’t we? Despite the success of not having that hand on the tiller:

We need more of this thinking and action – much more. There are strengths on which to build, but it means putting business before finance, prioritising real economic needs before overheated worries over public debt, thinking honestly about addressing the obvious costs of Brexit and committing genuinely to levelling up and achieving net zero. There are politicians, business leaders, officials and thinkers who get all this. We just need to have them in power – not sidelined by the delusional.

That’s right. Un-planning by the Great and Good has just been shown to work therefore we must have more planning by the Great and the Good.

If Will Hutton’s not even willing to learn from his own admissions of faulty thinking then why do the rest of us even give him the time of day?