Well, no, John Harris does have a point here

An important point even:

That day, I had been in Thurrock in Essex: the patch of built-up sprawl just beyond the border of Greater London where, amid Thursday’s endless Conservative meltdown, the Tories would lose 10 council seats and Labour would gain eight, putting Keir Starmer’s party in charge. That change points to the likelihood of the Conservatives also losing Thurrock’s parliamentary seat – which, thanks partly to the local 72% vote for Brexit, they last won with a majority of 11,000. But I was there to explore a much murkier story, which amounts to a parable of the past 14 years – of a Tory-led council that thought it could avoid austerity by borrowing £1.5bn to invest in risky business ventures, and ended up bankrupt, with a deficit.

This disaster finally became clear two years ago. Now, people in such places as Tilbury, Grays and Stanford-le-Hope are faced with a great litany of cuts: cancelled road projects, hacked-down adult social care and transport for kids with special needs, drastically altered bin collections and, to cap it all, huge increases in council tax.

We’re not sure that we’d put all of it in exactly those words but the underlying story is true. Thurrock Council borrowed a lot of money to invest. They managed to lose some to all of it. The result of that is indeed higher council tax bills, lower services and so on.

That’s Bad, M’Kay?

But there’s more as well. The money they borrowed was at less than market rates. They borrowed at those special, Treasury to local council, rates. If you can borrow below market and still, still, lose money you’re really not deploying capital well nor effectively. Warren Buffett has been borrowing below market rates for decades now and he’s turned that into being one of the richest men in the world.#

There’s a lesson from this. Local government doesn’t have the skill, nous, good sense or ability to invest well. Therefore we shouldn't be using local government to make investments. Of course, it might be true that further up government, at the national level, skills, nous, good sense and ability increase. But looking at HS2 there’s not grand evidence of that either. So, perhaps the lesson from this is that we shouldn;t be using government to do the investing for us?

Yes, yes, we know that’s entirely against the current weltanschauung but the evidence we have in front of us about the British state does seem to indicate that rather strongly.

Sure, sure, it’s wholly possible to make the theoretical case that government - packed with those Rolls Royce minds as it is - could do better but actual evidence of the contention seems to be lacking. So, let’s not do that then.