Interest rates are up, austerity is back, and we are told this is the only way to manage the current inflation crisis. Wrong. These approaches rely on a no longer fit-for-purpose economics orthodoxy. Instead of trying to solve a supply crisis with demand management, we should fundamentally reorganise our economies to face the supply constraints that will become the norm in our era of climate change, argues Jo Michell.

Following the recent brief but chaotic experiment with Tory fiscal profligacy, some commentators claim that the UK has no choice but to accept a sustained period of austerity. The market reaction to Truss's tax giveaways, they argue, demonstrates that the UK has no choice but to accept interest hikes, spending cuts and further dismantling of state provision.

This is a misleading account of the choices available to the government. It is true that an incoming Labour government will inherit an economy in dire straits following a decade of mismanagement. But a return to Treasury orthodoxy will only deepen the malaise; the forces that led to the stagnationary tendencies of the last decade – unequal income distribution, lack of investment and government retrenchment – have not gone away.