Huge infrastructure projects. A massive rise in public spending, and the creation of public works for an army of unemployed. Prime Minister Boris Johnson has started pitching himself as the new Roosevelt, modelling himself on the 1930s American president who spent big to pull the country out of the Great Depression, and re-wrote the rules of economics in the process. At this rate, he’ll be making speeches about there being nothing to fear ‘except fear itself’ and starting fireside chats over the wireless by the end of the week.
But hold on. Is FDR a model we really want to emulate? Not really. We don’t face anything like the same challenges, and the solutions that worked ninety years ago won’t necessarily work today.
True, when Roosevelt moved into the White House in 1933 the American economy desperately needed rescuing. The Great Depression witnessed a 30 per cent drop in output – only Greece in the 2010s has been worse – while unemployment soared to 25 per cent of the workforce.
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