Financial Times: Tables turned: a lesson from Latin America for the west

In 1997, Blair and Brown campaigned on a pledge to marry economic efficiency with social justice. Unnoticed by much of the world, Chile has done just that. Chile's economic growth rate has averaged more than 5 per cent since the country rid itself of Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship in 1990. Twenty years ago some two-fifths of Chile's public spending went on debt servicing. The figure now is zero. Instead 70 per cent of all public spending is on social programmes.

Mr Brown might feel particularly shamefaced. Had he stuck, as chancellor and prime minister, to the prudence promised in 1997, Britain would not be facing such a dreadful economic bust - nor an annual budget deficit that looks set to tip over 10 per cent of national income.

In truth, once the recession is over, the organising fact of British politics will be the huge deficits that governments are now accumulating in the effort to stave off slump. There will be room neither for tax cuts nor spending increases. There will instead be a demand that governments, left or right, spend money more effectively.