Britain is the Dorian Gray economy, hiding its ugly truths from the world. Now they are exposed | Aditya Chakrabortty

From Tony Blair to George Osborne, our rulers painted false pictures of success while real wealth and wages withered away

You know the central conceit of Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, of course you do. A lad of sun-kissed beauty is presented with a stunning likeness of himself. Disturbed at the notion that he will grow old while the painting doesn't, he locks it away - where it is the portrait that ages and uglifies while Dorian stays boyish and beautiful. But perhaps you've forgotten what happens next.

The story has come to my mind many times, as the foulness of British politics becomes ever harder to ignore. Genteel liberals wonder how their land of cricket whites and orderly queues could be ruled by a grasping liar such as Boris Johnson and I hear a whisper on the wind: Dorian Gray. The New York Times and Der Spiegel report in bewilderment on a country with pockets of deep poverty and unslaked anger, and again rasps that hoarse voice: the horror was hidden here all along.

Aditya Chakrabortty is a Guardian columnist