As we all know Willy Hutton has a plan for us all and our society. Which is that it should be managed by people like Willy Hutton. So that we all do what people like Willy think we ought to be doing.

There is a certain problem with this and it’s not just that perhaps we’d prefer not to be doing what we’re told to. The little niggle being that if the planner doesn’t even know what happened in the past then how can they direct that future? Today’s example:

The financial crash of 2008 was the consequence of hyper-deregulation, following the palpably absurd rightwing faith that markets were magic.

The thing being that we didn’t in fact deregulate the financial markets. Far from it in fact. The 1998 Bank of England Act increased the power of the Bank to regulate. Then the 2000 Financial Services Act centralised and strengthened regulatory control again - distinctly stronger regulation than under the 1988 Act.

It’s entirely true that both of these have been superseded by new acts - in 2016 and 2012 respectively - but it’s simply not true that the Blair years brought deregulation of finance let alone hyper- anything.

It is possible that those years brought bad regulation of those markets but that’s rather another matter isn’t it? And one which does rather undermine the idea that the bureaucratic classes - or even Willy Hutton - know what they’re doing and thus should plan matters for us.

Which does lead to that problem about any such set of plans. If the people making them don’t even know what has happened then how can they lay out that future?