The Guardian view on rethinking economics: a discipline in disarray holds too much sway in the UK | Editorial

Whether it is the financial crash, the pandemic or inflation shocks, the response is that spending cuts are needed as public debt threatens to bankrupt the nation.

Jeremy Rudd of the US Federal Reserve writes scornfully in his latest book, A Practical Guide to Macroeconomics, that economists’ role today is to justify “what elite interests want to do anyway: deregulate, pay fewer taxes, keep wages as low as possible”.

One school of thought attempting to rewrite the textbooks is called modern monetary theory, whose face is Stephanie Kelton, a former economic adviser to Bernie Sanders.

The theory is not just about deficits: a strong exporting nation should pursue fiscal surpluses – an insight attributed to Prof Kelton’s tutor and ex-Treasury adviser Wynne Godley.

Mr Brown’s successor Rachel Reeves prefers a deadening consensus, sacrificing policies to placate business while committing to Tory spending now that is “paid for” by austerity later.

One of Ms Reeves’ predecessors said that “the history of British policymaking in the last hundred years has taught us that on all the other occasions when major economic misjudgments were made, broad-based political, media, financial and popular opinion was in favour of the decision at the time, and the dissenting voices of economists were silenced or ignored”.