After the bailout of the banks, that seems to be the trouble with financial capitalism as well.

In ways we have not yet begun to appreciate, the loss of Britain's apparently secure position is changing the way we think. Until two years ago, an independent Scotland seemed economically feasible. After the British taxpayer was forced to bail out its largest banks, the idea feels as dead as East German communism. Although Green theory is based on the notion that we must stop putting growth before the interests of the environment, Green practice is dependent on continuing prosperity because alternatives to fossil fuels cannot be generated without public subsidy.

But the biggest change has yet to be felt. The change in the British way of life. Throughout this article, I have talked about booms and prosperity and non-doms as if good fortune was equally shared. But the cuts and the tax rises will fall on a country that is ill-equipped to carry them. Although when George W. Bush was in the White House, it was fashionable to denounce Americans as "stupid white men" guzzling burgers and maxing out their credit cards, the British fitted the stereotype of America better than the Americans themselves. While American household indebtedness reached 140 per cent before the crash, British indebtedness grew to 169 per cent of disposable income — every £1 coming into the average home had to service £1.69 of debt. By 2007, household debts — that is mortgages, loans and credit cards — overtook Britain's entire domestic product. We like to blame politicians for being spendthrifts who did not think about the future. But the British public as a whole was just as profligate and just as unwilling to accept the consequences.

As the level of debt implies, even in the good years Middle England was not as wealthy a place as metropolitans liked to imagine. The people "who work hard and play by the rules", whom politicians sought to flatter and court, could never think of sending their children to private schools or benefiting from a cut in inheritance tax. The typical member of the middle class has an income of £30,000. If it reaches the higher-rate tax bracket of 40 per cent, he or she is doing very well (only 3.8 million of Britain's 31.7 million income tax payers pay the higher rate). Middle England depends on public services and will notice spending cuts because it does not have the choice of going private, and cannot easily cope with tax rises as it has little money to spare.

Below them lies what we used to call the working class and below them the poorest tenth who, as the sociologist Danny Dorling puts it, can never afford a holiday and struggle to find £3 to send their children on a school trip. They are dependent on casual work and the maintenance of the maze of benefits Brown built for them. Shouldn't they be told that a part of what little they have may vanish? Shouldn't the working- and middle-classes be drawn into an argument about what should be cut and what should be spared?

This election is going to be looked back on with distaste because there was no adult conversation. The politicians didn't level with the public and the public didn't level with itself.

Go back to Robert Chote's warning about cuts and tax rises being inevitable "whatever party has the misfortune to emerge victorious". Misfortune is the right word. If you think people are angry with politicians now, you ain't seen nothing yet.