New figures show that the UK economy shrank by 2.4pc in the first quarter of this year. This is a revised number down from the 1.9pc previously reported.

It shows that the UK is in a much worse downturn than many expected and so-called green shoots of recovery are isolated statistical blips.

Many forecasters are now turning away from the much-hyped V-shaped recovery pattern, and even a more leisurely U-shape, to a wobbly “W”, or double-dip delayed type of recovery.

It’s clear the British economy is still in freefall. As in the 1980s, the biggest decline has been in manufacturing. While the public sector has continued to grow, the makers of things have taken blow after blow.

The weakest sectors have been new housebuilding and car making.

This is beginning to look very serious indeed for UK industry and any company in the private sector.

Gordon Brown, former British Chancellor, now Prime Minister, has come in for weighty criticism in recent days for his failure to spot and stop the runaway disaster that is the British economy.

Lord Turner, new head of the Financial Services Authority (FSA), blames Brown when Chancellor for the failure of regulation which led to catastrophic losses at Northern Rock, HBOS and RBS.

“They existed within a political philosophy where all the pressure on the FSA was not to say ‘why aren’t you looking at these business models?’, but ‘why are you being so heavy and intrusive, can’t you make your regulation a bit more light touch?’,” he said.

“We were supervising people like HBOS within a particular philosophy of the way you do regulation, which I think in retrospect was wrong. I think (the FSA’s actions were) a competent execution of a style of regulation and a philosophy in regulation which was, in retrospect, mistaken.”

Similarly, Bank of England Governor Mervyn King claims he has been shouting warnings for years about risky lending without any response from Brown.

It is on the record that Brown delivered a speech in the City urging them to take even greater risks.

The Prime Minister is now trying to cover the mess up by throwing the kitchen sink at sacked RBS boss Fred Goodwin’s enormous pension. Significantly this was done as the Treasury unveiled its third bank bailout in the form of a £325 billion insurance scheme for desperate RBS.

Meanwhile the head of the Audit Commission, Steve Bundred, warned that public debt is at “Armageddon levels” and will exceed two-thirds of the entire annual economic output of the country.

As Brown heads for Washington to try to convince the new adminstration to set up a “global regulatory system” the rest of us should ask why we should believe him now when he failed so spectacularly for 12 years.

During and after the Great Depression of the 1930s many people asked the same question.

As it turned out, capitalism wasn’t dead, just undergoing one of its periods of creative destruction, when old practices and outworn businesses are ruthlessly purged.

Free markets are a natural phenomenon, like grass. If you cut grass, it grows back again. So does capitalism. It is government that is an unnatural construct of human ingenuity. Long, hard-won experience tells us it should be limited in size and scope.

John Evans has written a piece on what will happen to capitalism under the title, Is socialism the new quid on the block?

The “failure” of capitalism should be seen as part of a greater failure involving government and its duties to society. These are principally, sensitive regulation of systemic elements of the modern economy, like banks and other financial services, and ensuring monetary and fiscal balance across its operations.

It is now clear that government has failed systemically over the past decade by taking on too much debt, a condition mirrored in consumers’ personal balance sheets, and by serious mismanagement of the regulatory process.

Read Is socialism the new quid on the block?