In the very uncertain subject of political economy, I am inclined to agree with Gordon Brown's government that too early a start on cutting the UK Budget would threaten a still precarious economic recovery, although I am suspicious of trying to determine the issue by a head count of economists writing letters to the press. Why then do I shrink from giving that government my full support?

It is partly because so many of its initiatives need form no part of a Keynesian policy for maintaining demand. Some specific interventions could be justified as temporary measures for sectors hard hit by recession. But a glance at any Labour policy document shows that they are seen instead as part of the comeback of the almighty state.

There are only three ways of securing action to further the public good: voluntary co-operation, market pressures and coercive action by a central authority. The job of that authority is to provide services and regulation that cannot be provided by the other two methods. Economic liberals would do well to admit that the recent bank crisis has shifted the boundaries between these methods towards state action. But nothing that has happened overthrows my low-key definition, which is in contrast to the idea of the state as embodying something noble to which the individual should be subordinate.