With the “nice decade” finished and the global economy lurching fitfully towards what looks set to be a long, dry period of low liquidity, what is Britain’s macroeconomic policy? Or, indeed – where is it? How is the country going to make its money over the next century, and why aren’t we talking about it?

The public finances of course are debated with increasing frequency, and rare indeed is the citizen without an opinion on taxes and government spending. That subject is liable to be become an ever more prominent topic of conversation in the coming years, as economic contraction means the Chancellor will no longer be able to use growth to paper over the breathtakingly vast off-balance-sheet debt with which his predecessor laboured the exchequer through the artifice of the Private Finance Initiative.

But whether or not the Treasury’s coffers are full (and how it chooses to empty them) are but a detail of the greater economic picture. For every penny paid in tax first has to be generated by our nation’s workforce, through the goods and services they produce and sell. And it’s here that the silence on policy is most deafening.

In the age of globalisation, is anyone worried about our disproportionate reliance upon financial services and international capital? As food prices soar and supply stagnates, are we happy that only 1% of our population engage in agriculture? With national security and sovereignty in mind, what are our plans for energy self-sufficiency?

I’m sure there are people – probably extremely able ones, too – who are thinking about these matters and researching the options. But if we are to make serious plans for our country’s economic welfare and security over the next century, the question can’t be left to technocrats or to the vested interests of private business. The whole footing of our economy must become a matter of truly public concern, and be reported with the prominence it deserves in the media. Only then can we make an informed and coherent set of decisions about how to react to new economic circumstances, and in today’s climate, that can’t happen soon enough.