Standing in the drafty corridors of power, you hear a recurring ghost story. It is the myth of the “nation’s credit card.” For decades, this rhetorical device has been used by the cautious and the cynical to strangle public ambition in its crib. But as Andy Burnham attempts to channel the spirit of the 1950s and 60s, he must realize that you cannot rebuild a crumbling foundation by adhering to the very fiscal superstitions that led to the decay.

Burnham is right to look back at the post-war era, not as a museum piece, but as a blueprint for what happens when a state decides that its primary function is the material advancement of its people. The current political class is terrified of the markets, behaving like a tenant farmer before a vengeful landlord. They have internalized the Thatcherite lie that a country’s economy is identical to a kitchen table budget. It is not. A household cannot print its own currency, nor can it stimulate its own income by investing in its own infrastructure. When a government treats borrowing as a sin rather than a tool, it isn’t being “fiscal responsible”; it is being economically illiterate.

The deindustrialization of the 1980s wasn’t an act of God; it was a policy choice rooted in the idea that the state should retreat and let the “invisible hand” handle the heavy lifting. We are currently living in the ruins of that experiment. You see it in the shuttered factories and the stagnating wages that have defined the last forty years. If Burnham wants to rekindle the optimism of the mid-century, he has to stop apologizing for the cost of progress. Keynes understood that in a slump, the greatest risk is not overspending, but the inertia that comes from fear.

The markets are not a weather pattern; they are a reflection of confidence. When a government shows it has a credible plan to build, to employ, and to modernize, the markets follow. The terror of a “run on the pound” is often a bogeyman used to justify inaction. If we continue to prioritize the aesthetic of a balanced ledger over the reality of a functioning society, we will stay trapped in this cycle of managed decline. Burnham’s project requires more than just a nice line in nostalgia. It requires the courage to tell the public that the credit card is a myth, and that the only way to pay for the future is to actually build it.