Macroeconomics: UK economy, IB Economics

Ironic that Faisal Islam should chose to illustrate a story about under-investment in the UK with Milton Keynes. The reality is that the UK's under-investment is as old as the 1960s city.

The fact of the matter is that Britain has had a productivity issue for nearly 60 years. There are lots of factors at play - and it's taken lots of different forms - culminating in lower levels of robot technologies and low public sector investment too. 

It's also true that for many in government, deindustrialisation and a reliance of financial services has, for most of the time period, masked some of this and kept growth high. However, perhaps we've lost some of our competitive advantage in finance, and as our trading partners forge ahead, we're left lagging. 

Larry Elliott with an economic history of Britain under Queen Elizabeth, noting that over 70 years many things have remained constant - not least our belief that, from time to time, we've cracked it. 

He argues that the reality is that whilst we've got wealthier and healthier, we've not ever really tackled the deep-seated structural problems that have existed since the end of the Second World War, and remain fixated on investment the domestic property market and under-investment elsewhere.