The Tories aren't incompetent on the economy – they know exactly what they are doing | David Edgerton

This Brexiter government is pursuing its political goal, whatever the economic cost. Its predecessors did the same

There is no alternative" was the mantra of British politics from the 1980s to the very recent past. To bring about change it was necessary to unleash enterprise, or globalisation, or technology. Politics was about staying out of the economy, and coping with the social consequences. But there always was an alternative - it is just that the loudest voices denied it. As Adam Tooze has noted, the state never left the economy, it just changed its role, and its visibility. Since the 1980s the economy has been actively reshaped by a series of political-economic decisions by successive activist governments.

Over the years, the aims of British political-economic policy have changed. Once, the main concerns were the national rate of growth, the national balance of trade, reducing inequalities within the boundaries of the nation, and strengthening the nation compared with others. Since the 1980s, and by these measures, things have not got better. Neither under Thatcher nor under New Labour, let alone more recently, did the UK achieve the rates of GDP growth of the 1950s and 1960s. Since the 1980s the balance of trade has stayed systematically worse than in the 1950s or 1960s. In relation to goods it is at the previously unthinkable level of -6% of GDP.

Public assets have been privatised, handed to a new class of rentier capitalist to sweat and extract monopolistic rents

Related: Why Brexit is a chance to fix the UK economy's long-term problems