My little lad was made up, and up in the stand he asked me ‘why’s everyone booing Wayne? I thought you don’t boo good players?’ And that’s right, we should just be in awe of how good Wayne’s becoming, and be proud that we nurtured him and that someone that good played for Everton Football Club. Whatever anyone says, £27m or whatever was fantastic business and it just goes to show how much debt the club was in that Wayne’s transfer fee hasn’t wiped the slate clean.”What does Stubbs, Evertonian to the core, think when he sees the “Die Rooney!” graffiti daubed on walls near Goodison Park?”Well, a lot of fans are sensible about it He’s gone, he’s made us a lot of money, let’s look forward But that ‘Die Rooney’ stuff is unacceptable. But we knew it was inevitable he would leave no matter how hard Everton tried to keep him. Some of the players thought he’d stay another season, but Wayne came back from the Euros and felt the time was right to move.

Although it was Labour that eventually succumbed to devaluation in 1967, the seeds had been sown in the earlier Conservative years. For John Major, the economy wasn’t quite his undoing – the Tories managed, against the odds, to win in 1992 – but the recession was bad enough to reduce his majority to an unworkable 21 seats.So I suppose there are two obvious issues to face up to. First, prime ministers, despite what they might plan, haven’t managed to survive the third term in office of their government: both Macmillan and Thatcher eventually had to go. If history is to repeat itself – and I’m not suggesting that it needs to – we’d then have to contemplate life with a new prime minister and – who knows? – maybe a new chancellor as well. Second, achieving good economic performance seems possible over one or two terms but, during the third term, it’s typically been the case that a government’s luck has eventually run out. Economies do go wrong from time to time and, if they don’t do so in the first few years in office, it’s wrong to assume that they never will.To date, Labour’s record on the economy has been rather impressive. The table shows economic performance from 1955 to date and allows us to take a look at the relative success of each government based on a series of straightforward measures of macroeconomic success.There’s no doubt that, based purely on growth and inflation, the current government seems to have performed very well indeed.

The Chancellor and his team have managed to achieve an annualised growth rate not far short of 3 per cent, the best performance since the early 1970s. And, unlike the Tories’ experience back then, there’s been no pick-up in inflation: inflationary performance in the UK in recent years has been the best there’s been since the late 1950s and early 1960s. Investment doesn’t look too bad either – not the best, but most definitely not the worst. The trade and current account deficits are bigger – although, with much more capital mobility around the world these days, this need not be a major problem in the short term – but the fiscal position has, for the most part, been very well behaved. All in all, it’s been an impressive performance.Of course, it’s not entirely clear that this impressive mix of strong growth and low inflation is entirely Labour’s making. The current government inherited a strong macroeconomic platform from the Tories on coming into office in 1997. And there are weaknesses: the UK’s performance has not delivered the same kind of productivity growth that we’ve seen in the US, for example.It’s also worth noting, however, that the numbers in the table don’t really compare like with like.

Knowing how the Tories did over three or four terms isn’t quite the same thing as knowing what Labour have so far achieved over two terms when they still have the opportunity to blow it all in a third term.For example, although growth on average across the Tories’ first two terms in office from 1979 onwards was no different from what they achieved over four terms, people’s experience of the Tories in the mid-1980s was, on the whole, rather good. In the second term, the Tories achieved an annual GDP growth rate of 3.6 per cent. It may all have ended in inflationary tears and house price depression but, in the 1987 election, the Tories were trusted to run the economy – rather like Labour today.So are there some banana skins out there, or will we see a continuation of the excellent performance of recent years? There are certainly some things to worry about. The one that’s most obviously beyond Labour’s control is the external environment.