It's more than a decade since the financial crisis. Where's the recovery? | Larry Elliott

We've had plenty of difficult periods before, but they were temporary and explicable

It's the dog days of 2009. Gordon Brown is prime minister, Alistair Darling is chancellor of the exchequer and Mervyn King is governor of the Bank of England.

Britain has been through a tough two years. As a country heavily dependent on financial services, it has been especially hard hit by the banking crash of 2008. The economy has suffered some severe recessions since the second world war but the slump of 2008-09 has been the worst of the lot.