Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who brought the United States out of recession in the 1930s by huge investments in public works, has become the new model for Boris Johnson’s government to follow. In a series of remarks, he and his Cabinet Office secretary Michael Gove have set the stage for a large expansion in public spending instead of a return to austerity, in order to propel the British economy out of the coronavirus doldrums.

This is an emphatic break with Conservative thinking since the beginning of the Thatcher era. It is accompanied by a programme of reform to the civil service to break the hold of what is said to be a “group think” mentality, sometimes rudely described as “the blob”. It means changing the way the civil service recruits its members, with more scientists and mathematicians, and moving away from London. According to Mr Gove, who set out a theoretical basis for these changes in his Ditchley Lecture last weekend, governments need to be prepared to take risks and learn from trial and error – as Roosevelt did.