The political victory of the City over manufacturing has been a long and cross-party project with significant consequences for our current economic predicament. Robin Ramsay examines the journey from the 70s to the present day. 

You might say the Shadow Chancellor had an easy job yesterday, persuading the Labour conference and the world outside that he is a better man than Osborne to hold the wheel of the sinking British economy. But while Balls may have succeeded in sounding credible, there was no big Labour vision for the future, and more than a flavour of Brown.

The role of the writer in politics is to speak truth to power. But the relationship of politicians to the truth has shifted over the last generation, due in part to the perceived power of the media. So how do the writers who would be speakers of the truth respond?