This summer, we went on holiday to Italy. While Britain seems to be in a state of perpetual flux, nothing much had changed since the last time we were there: the same delicious food and wine, the same immaculate medieval towns, the same beautiful frescoes and churches and galleries.
Yet there is a dark side to Italy’s immutability, especially for its citizens. Another thing that has hardly changed in the past decade and a half is the level of the country’s national income. Italy’s GDP was, in real terms, no larger this past year than it was at the turn of the millennium. That is a staggering fact. Even with the collapse of 2008 to 2009, the UK’s national income has grown by more than a quarter over the same period.
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