The new leviathan: the big state is back

‘In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem,’ proclaimed Ronald Reagan in his inaugural speech as American president. Forty years on, the leaders of the G7 have reversed this mantra. In Cornwall last week they declared that the government, and more specifically its $12 trillion of economic support, had not only been the answer during the pandemic but would continue to be the answer during the recovery. They committed ‘to support our economies for as long as is necessary, shifting the focus of our support from crisis response to promoting growth into the future’.

It would have been quite possible for leaders to have drawn a very different conclusion: bloated government bureaucracies have failed. Lavishly-funded public health bodies patted themselves on the back about their pandemic readiness; the US and the UK were ranked the two best prepared countries in the world, but in the event, they had planned for the wrong pandemic.