The government doesn't seem to grasp that the foreign payments deficit has a direct impact on its ability to get the national budget back into surplus. Unless it changes tack it will continue to fail.
None of the Labour candidates has an economic approach that will prove viable but it is essential to oppose austerity, what is the solution?
Investment is low, the trade deficit is growing, and what growth we have is largely driven by ultra-cheap money and asset inflation. This is unbalanced and unsustainable.
The new book Progressive Capitalism in Britain encourages a narrow focus on high-tech exports. Instead, Britain must allow its medium and low tech exports flourish too.
No matter how much he repeats it, Osborne doesn't have any proposals at all to deal with the real problems our economy faces.
Because sterling is much too strong, manufacturing as a percentage of GDP in the UK has shrunk from 32% as late as 1970 to the unviable level of barely 10% now.
We need to move investment to those areas with the highest returns for society as a whole. The best way to do that is to fix our over-valued currency.
Blair's revolution failed. We now have many graduates failing to get a suitable job. All the while the UK's trade gap worsens. If we want an economy of production rather than service then the government must step in.
The 2008 crash wasn't simply a financial crisis. We must also look at the wider economics imbalances which had built up and which directly contributed to the unstable state of the world's finances.
There is nothing to stop us reviving the UK economy via resurgent performance in manufacturing, exporting and import substitution provided we get the cost base charged out to the rest of the world on a competitive basis.
The recent rise in the minimum wage restores it to where it was in 2005. As more and more workers sit on this baseline, where next?
Reducing inequality is a complex task and will required a broad mix of reducing unemployment, increasing manufacturing jobs, lowering debt and cracking down on tax avoidance.
