Do we now get to fire them all?

An interesting way of defining the size of the public sector:

Although these workers and their employers might not consider themselves public sector staff, he said, they are nonetheless funded by the taxpayer and working for the state.

Mr Mortimer-Lee said: “If it looks like a public sector job, smells like a public sector job and has the same terms and conditions as a public sector job, then it's probably a public sector job.

“Whatever the government statisticians say, this is a better way of measuring it. They think [their way] is a better way of measuring it because it gives a lower number.”

The result of this different way of counting?

Analysis by the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (Niesr) suggests that around 10.6m people are employed by the state – far more than the 5.7m typically cited by the Government.

One in three workers are now in the public sector, according to Niesr analysis, up from 25pc when Tony Blair came to power in 1997, with the rise continuing steadily after David Cameron took over and despite the austerity policies of then-Chancellor George Osborne.

Which is an interesting result. We’re not wholly certain that we’d 100% agree with and wholly rely upon this new method and result but it is indeed interesting.

What’s even more so is the logical result of this. We’re told that British productivity growth has been weak at best these past couple of decades. Therefore we must change economic tack. Which seems fair enough. But that change in tack is then usually claimed to be stopping the austerity, stopping the neoliberal insistence upon markets and going back to a more intrusive and extensive state.

But if this analysis is true then reality is that we’ve been having the more intrusive and extensive state this past couple of decades which is what produces the weak productivity performance. Thus that’s the thing that has to be changed.

In short, bring on the neoliberal revolution and let’s start firing swathes of those public sector employees. They are, after all, making us all poorer than we need to be. Whether it will actually work, doing so, is dependent upon the accuracy of this analysis. But it’ll be fun too so why not do it just on the off-chance?