Like developers and councils addicted to building on flood plains, Britain has yet to heed the wake-up call sounded by the banking crisis. Our transient prosperity rests precariously upon flimsy foundations. Whatever state Britain’s financial sector is in when the recession is long gone, banking will never provide the bedrock on which this country can build an internationally competitive economy. Nor can we pay our way in the world selling properties in central London at grotesquely inflated prices to mega-rich foreigners. Nor – however competitive they become and whatever contribution they make – can we prosper simply by supplying fashion accessories to customers abroad and by attracting overseas students to universities and colleges here.

How is Britain going to pay our way in the world without changing the whole trajectory of economic policy? Our share of world trade fell by a fifth between 1998 and 2010, and is forecast to fall by a further tenth by 2019. By August 2014 UK foreign trade performance had been the worst in the G7 over the previous 20 years: a terrible predicament for a country whose Tory Prime Minister was then regularly trumpeting as being world beating. And sadly there seems no end in sight to this decline. In March 2014 the Office for Budget Responsibility reported that ‘net trade is expected to make little contribution to growth over the remainder of the forecast period, reflecting the weakness of export market growth and a gradual decline in export market share’. Yet the 2014 Tory/Lib Dem budget did not address that at all and Britain’s trade figures in June 2014 were some of the worst in recent history. Unless there is a change of export culture – which means a new industrial policy driven by our government in the way Germany’s is – there will be no export-led recovery, and Britain’s relative international decline will continue.

The lesson of Germany is a salutary one for those who think otherwise. For it is the one European economy to have emerged from the financial crisis in reasonable shape – and why? Primarily because it has a strong, advanced and internationally competitive manufacturing sector which, despite relatively high social and labour costs, has underpinned a vigorous economy. Manufacturing accounts for 21 per cent of German GDP but only 11 per cent of the UK’s.