Economics, says John Mills, is a discipline against which serious charges need to be laid: that it has still not developed a generally accepted comprehensive theory about how to achieve, in combination, the major economic policy objectives which the vast majority of people evidently want to see attained. These are full employment, a good-ish growth rate, low-ish inflation, the alleviation of poverty and a sustainable future.

Mills' history of economic thought starts with the Ancient World, moves through the Mediaeval Church, the French Physiocrats and Mercantilism to Adam Smith, whose Wealth of Nations, in 1776, was, and still is, a fundamental building block of modern economics. In a chapter called "Dissent", Mills discusses the critiques of capitalism and imperialism by Marx and Lenin in particular and by the Left in general. In the 20th Century John Maynard Keynes and Milton Friedman stand out as the two most influential figures. The fact that their respective theories were only regarded as successful in practice for a few decades - Keynsian policies being associated with the failure of the British political and economic system in the 1970s, and monetarism, ironically, with the high unemployment and recession of the eurozone today - illustrates Mills' contention that economics has not so far come up with a durable recipe for economic success.

Mills is a highly successful businessman, active in local politics and a significant figure in Labour circles. His feet are thus firmly anchored in the real world. His own recommendations for improving the effectiveness of the dismal science are refreshingly straightforward. He urges policymakers to recognise that developed and developing economies alike need strong manufacturing sectors, because it is there that real gains in productivity are to be had. He believes that misguidedly tight monetary policies have saddled economies like our own with interest rates and exchange rates far higher than they need to be, resulting in an economy-wide high cost base.