The UK’s capitalism has failed because:
1. There is rampant inequality – resulting in a finance capitalism boom
2. Unions have been effectivley neutered leading to 1 above
3. There is insufficient state involvement in infrastructure and planning. For example, compare the Beeching destruction of a perfectly good rail network on market principles to Germany’s utilisation of a similar network to decentralise industrial production, ensure that hinterland towns share in national prosperity and slow down the drift of population out of the countryside.
4. The welfare state has become a “hopeless case” safety net where it was originally meant to be an enabling and servicing adjunct to the economy – a function which is a defining feature of (successful) Scandinavian capitalism.

“The Brown/Blair experiment came about because the Left in the UK had no coherent political or economic response to Thatcherism. ”

Nope. The Blair/Brown “experiment” (you really believe it was innovative??) failed because it whole heartedly embraced Thatcherism and refused to reverse any of the disastrous changes it had made.

“It is just possible that Corbyn could become PM. If so, his government will be a failure like Hollande’s in France recently.”

Hollande’s politics are the same as Blair’s. Why you think that a Corbyn government – which would enact completely different policies – would be similar is anyone’s guess.

What I am asking for is a reasonably successful capitalist economy.
One which generates enough wealth to pay for a decent welfare state. (In fairness, the present welfare state works well in very many respects, though it indulges the retired and the middle class.)
Not a ‘socialist’ one like the Venezuela basket case.
Not an unsuccessful capitalist economy such as Brown/Blair presided over, where there would be ‘no more boom and bust.’

The Brown/Blair experiment came about because the Left in the UK had no coherent political or economic response to Thatcherism.
Sadly, it still has none.

It is just possible that Corbyn could become PM. If so, his government will be a failure like Hollande’s in France recently.

You misunderstand how government spending works. Tax is not collected and then spent. When government spends money it is money it creates itself. Effectively it puts money into the economy which it borrows off itself. Taxation is a balancing measure needed to prevent this leading to excessive inflation – taking some of the money it has “spent” back out of circulation..

“The problem is that we lack a capitalist economy capable of producing
sufficient revenue needed to sustain this level of spending and – in
consequence – are constantly trying to manage deficits.”

You say “manage deficits” as if it is dealing with a problem. Every single nation on Earth manages deficits and has always done so. The principle is simple: The wealth generated by the money you have effectively “borrowed” from the future is greater than will be the cost further down the line. Occasionally (as now) economic half wits contrive to balance budgets and the consequence has always been economic collapse. The frightening prospect at the moment is that the coming collapse will coincide with the chaos caused by Brexit.

I’d love to know what you mean by “a capitalist economy capable of producing
sufficient revenue needed to sustain this level of spending”. Britain and the US currently have the most red in tooth and claw capitalism they have had since the 1930s. They are certainly more capitalist than any other advanced economies. What on Earth are you asking for?

“As for Corbyn and co; you appear to have confidence in them. Good luck convincing others.”

I don’t vote labour. But the opinion polls indicate that enough people are being convinced to produce a majority under our first past the post system.

The Tories and New Labour believed that finance capitalism was the way forward and – until 2008 – they convinced an awful lot of people.
As for Corbyn and co; you appear to have confidence in them. Good luck convincing others.

A strong industrial economy grounded in domestic demand.

“Unhappily, much of the Left in the UK has never really understood the
need for a viable capitalist economy to pay for the welfare state. Other
European countries are more sensible.”

Yes. They understood that a “viable capitalist economy” depended on a strong welfare state. Even Victorian Tories understood that to some extent. That’s why they came up with the idea of municipal housing, provision of clean water and sewage, free elementary education, libraries, museums etc. They would have been considered mad lefties by New Labour.

“Most depressingly, Corbyn, McDonnell and Abbott would almost certainly make things much worse if they were in charge.”

As their proposals are the same as the policies long successfully adopted in most other European countries, I struggle to understand your reasoning.

“And yet, I have to admit, we have material prosperity unimaginable when I was growing up in the 50s/60s.”

Indeed. But was was also unimaginable in the 1950s and 60s when we grew up, was the idea that living standards would be set to fall.

It is convenient to trot out the Daily Mail as a scapegoat. The blame goes deeper. Idiocy went way beyond the capitalist class.
Unhappily, much of the Left in the UK has never really understood the need for a viable capitalist economy to pay for the welfare state. Other European countries are more sensible.

Most depressingly, Corbyn, McDonnell and Abbott would almost certainly make things much worse if they were in charge.

And yet, I have to admit, we have material prosperity unimaginable when I was growing up in the 50s/60s.

Then you have to wonder why such policies continued to work elsewhere. There would be nothing rueful about Callaghan’s so called “conceding”. The Gaitskellite wing of the Labour Party were always ideologicallly close to the Tories. When you look at Gaitskell as Chancellor, he showed much of the myopic confusion between economics annd accountancy which we now associate with Spreadsheet Phil. He had no grasp whatsoever of what creates wealth and the economic dysfunction which occurs when it is not properly distributed.

“It was not a lack of demand for cars that led to the demise of the UK
car making industry and the loss of (comparatively) high skill/paying
jobs.”

Indeed. It was the fact that the industry was run and controlled by idiots – a function of the type of capitalism prevalent in the UK then and now. The standard narrative is that over powerful unions priced themselves out of jobs: The “British disease” as the Mail and Telegraph would have you believe. Yet Germany, France and the Scandinavian countries had unions which were far more powerful yet they massively outstripped what was once one of the World’s most powerful imperial powers. How did they do that if Callaghan’s verdict on demand management was correct?

The ‘demand management’ policies of the 1950s and 1960s eventually ceased working – as Jim Callaghan ruefully conceded in 1976.

It was not a lack of demand for cars that led to the demise of the UK car making industry and the loss of (comparatively) high skill/paying jobs.
Similarly, it was not a shortage of demand for clothes that wiped out the (comparatively) low skill/paying textile industry in North West England and the Scottish Borders.

That is because the progressive and demand management policies of both parties in that period resulted not only in job creation but in self improvement opportunites which resulted in more people acquiring skills and further/higher education so that there were less people available to fill the unskilled jobs. This is why wages increased. The supply side policies which both parties have followed since 1979 do the opposite. They have resulted in an increasing surplus of unskilled people which does indeed make it inevitable that wages will fall.

Are you seriously presenting this as an indicator of economic well being? The same is true of Edinburgh where I live and I’m sure it would be so for Glasgow or London or anywhere else where high paid jobs are concentrated. What’s more, we’re in the age of the credit card. How many of these urban revellers are partying on a maxed out Mastercard?

” it is usually linked to their own personal problems which any govt
would struggle to resolve although spending much more on mental health
would help.”

All research shows that mental health problems are usually caused by economic problems not the other way around; poor educational and training outcomes are the clear result of decades of squeezed public spending. When our competitors were investing in their youth, our stupid politicians, high on supply side voodoo economics, were investing in their bankers and insurance salesmen – with the results we saw in 2008….

‘The UK is full of people with no skills.’ This is an absurd generalization. I agree that we have a low skills economy compared to Germany for example. Governments – since the Wilson government in 1964 – have talked about tackling this and done depressingly little.

It is not ‘inevitable’ that people with low skills will see their wages decline. It did not happen in the 1950s and 1960s.

Those with low skills have had their standard of living eroded by government policies favouring the better off and by the increase in immigration.
A selfish middle class has supported this latter development.

The attitude that the country does not need ‘more cleaners’ is depressing. Try running a hospital without cleaners.

Describing the functioning of the labour market as “special pleading” is just political claptrap. The UK economy is in very poor shape and needs more skills, more innovation and more professionalism. It does not need more cleaners and dinner ladies.

Also, the information given is for pay in 2005, 2010 and 2015. The first date came after a large increase in public spending. Sadly, middle class professionals did much better than unskilled working class people in this.

There is more than a hint of special pleading for the public sector middle class.

I wouldn’t patronise the ordinary voter/worker, however, the media has done the country a disservice and so has the political leadership. We live in an age wear the means to get the message across to all consumers exists. However, the media have failed to evolve to the task, in terms of evaluation and contextualisation of the message and in terms of delivering the message in intelligible, consumable formats. I don’t accept your last sentence and would lay the blame not on the electorate but on the political leadership, the political parties and the media, in that order.

But as the first part of your moniker suggests, there is little place for the rational and evaluative thought process where the brain is filled with the need for the angry rant.

Your ridiculous comment that the UK economy has offered more work than the economies of Poland, Romania, Bulgaria (in the EU) or Pakistan or Bangladesh is hilarious. This is the level that Tory apologists have sunk to: comparing what was once a Great Power of the world with extremely weak economies of the developing world.

Moreover, the article is mocking the “respectability” being afforded Osborne and the Tories with their appalling economic record — as far as working people are concerned. Of course, their record as far as business is concerned was fine until the Brexit nonsense. Now that they are opposed to cheap immigrant labour, and have engineered the collapse of UK trade, no business in the UK is going to support the Tories.