Is the big state back in Britain?

The Labour Party’s first month in power has given scaremongers plenty to work with. Britain’s new government has begun to unveil what looks to be the most interventionist economic agenda the country has seen in the past 50 years. Railways are to be re-nationalised. An activist state is spending billions on industrial policy and setting up a new energy behemoth. Teachers and doctors will receive big pay increases. A workers’ rights agenda is to come—as are, almost certainly, increases in taxes on capital gains.