Politicians like to say that the government should run the country like a household runs its finances. It’s a silly analogy, since households bear no resemblance to countries: they can’t issue currency, or borrow perpetually, or much else besides. But even if we take the idea literally, governments haven’t been forthright about how they manage the pot. What they’ve done would be like your spouse saying the accounts all balance but failing to mention that he cashed in his kids’ college fund to settle some gambling debts. The fact is that the country’s public endowment, once rich, is now paltry.

When we look at what’s in the public savings account, the numbers are appalling. The government’s net worth — the value of its public assets minus its debt — now stands at over £700 billion in the red, making it one of the worst in the developed world. Governments have been raiding Britain’s jewel cabinet, privatising state assets or delaying maintenance work on deteriorating infrastructure, only to distribute the revenue or savings in the form of tax cuts. While this has been going on for decades, the slide into negative territory occurred under George Osborne. The former Chancellor justified his austerity programme by saying he was fixing the roof while the sun was shining. In reality, he was ripping it off and selling the tiles.

“George Osborne said he was repairing the roof while the sun was shining. In reality he was taking the roof off and selling the tiles.”

Now the rains have come and we all know the results. Trains that run slowly or are late, if they run at all; backlogs at ports; leaky school buildings and ill-equipped hospitals; building permits delayed by a lack of planning officers or inspectors; workers whose productivity is damaged by long-term illnesses, because of their inability to get timely treatment in an overloaded health system; employers who cannot find workers with the required skills because of underinvestment in the education system.

This is unpleasant enough in itself, but it also discourages private investment, by raising costs and reducing returns. So it’s not just as consumers that Britons suffer from the collapse of the public sector. They suffer as producers, too, as they are prevented from realising their economic potential. But even if the Labour government were to abandon its ambition to lead an investment revival by rebuilding the roof of the public sector, it would probably cost more money than it has at its disposal. So unless the Chancellor of the Exchequer is prepared to deepen the cuts that the electorate rebelled against at the election, she will have to either increase borrowing or taxes, or both.

If Reeves is prepared to be bold, and if she is prepared to take the blows she will receive for misleading the electorate, then there is room for her to do both. On debt, the Chancellor of the Exchequer has promised to stick to the budget rule that the previous government imposed on itself, namely that the ratio of government debt to GDP must fall within five years, while the ratio of the budget deficit to GDP, currently over 4%, must fall to 3% within the same period.

While such targets have the merit of communicating stability and predictability to investors, and thus preventing the panic of “Liz Truss moments” — a term that has become forever part of the economic lexicon — they can also lead to perverse outcomes. Germany’s strict adherence to its debt brakes has, in the midst of recessions of the kind it is currently experiencing, forced the government to take procyclical measures that deepen the recession: as the economy shrinks, the government has to cut spending, and as the government cuts spending, aggregate demand falls and the recession deepens.