There might be a way to avoid higher taxes after coronavirus. Here’s how

‘Let us never forget this fundamental truth: the state has no source of money other than money which people earn themselves. If the state wishes to spend more it can only do so by borrowing your savings or by taxing you more. It is no good thinking someone else will pay – that “someone else” is you. There is no such thing as public money; there is only taxpayers’ money.’

These words, by Margaret Thatcher at the 1983 Conservative party conference, have often been used as a justification for rolling back the state so that private citizens can spend more of their own money. They seem to cast the state as a parasitical creature, eager to be active but always needing to be fed.

They come from an era when Ronald Reagan was making similar points across the Atlantic, albeit in a less severe style. Reagan’s message to the public sector, he once joked, was: ‘Don’t just do something, stand there’.