Princess Di and Chauncey Gardiner

Remember how things were when Princess Diana died? Public mourning was compulsory. The Queen came under fire for not being grief-stricken anough and had to be coached on emoting by Tony Blair. The whole mawkish episode has been described as the end of the traditional British stiff upper lip.

Right now we seem to be seeing the Dianification of the UK economy. On Wednesday the junior Industry Minister, Baroness Vadera, led on by an interviewer, allowed as how she could see signs of "green shoots of recovery" in the economy, though she cautioned that it was too soon to tell if they would grow. I suppose it was a bit of a Chauncey Gardiner moment ("In the spring there will be growth"), but from the reaction she got from the opposition, you'd think she'd come out in support of Al-Qaeda. The Tories screamed that her comments showed that she, and by extension the Government, were out of touch and living on another planet.

Truth is, the lady may have a point. Her comments were apparently triggered by a successful bond issue by National Grid, which she sees as evidence that capital markets are unfreezing; but she could equally have pointed to the announcement of thousands of new jobs at several of the larger retailers and at the oiler manufacturer Worcester Bosch; or to plans to hasten the building of several new power stations. There's plenty of bad news all right, but as always in a recession, such good news as there is tends to get swamped.

Back in the dirty thirties, FDR tried to overcome this tendency by telling the American people "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself". The Tories seem determined to ignore this, just as they seem determined to ignore all of the other lessons that were learned during the Great Depression.

Sad to say, Baroness Vadera got only lukewarm support from her colleagues in government. Her boss, Lord Mandelson, was on TV by the end of the day, wearing his best shit-eating grin, to assure viewers that she wouldn't be saying anything like that again. If Chauncey Gardiner was around today spouting his wisdom, the politicians would probably put him in the stocks.