That's a very important point and I'm surprised that Delingpole doesn't get it.
Delingpole's argument applies to liberal/left voters, not to liberal/left leaders. That's a very big distinction.
The leaders know precisely what is going on and what they are doing: wrecking the economy in order to increase the size of government while use the method of increasing the size of government in order to wreck the economy.
They tell their sh*t-for-brains followers that it is all a matter of "fairness". But they (the leaders) know the truth. They know what it is all about.
And feeding in to this equation -- always, like an incessant drumbeat -- is the media and the education system (both run by that same left/liberal leadership), always hammering away at the mentality of the unsuspecting public, working on them in ways to increase their stupidity, daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, decade after decade.
And it works.
The public grows more and more stupid, votes more and more liberal/left, and the liberal/left (including in the Republican Party) is more and more in control. Daily, weekly, monthly, yearly over a period of decades.
Yeah, if a active and growing economy served their purposes of advancing their power, it would be a priority.
But it doesn’t serve that purpose. In fact, a good economy leads to too much individual independence, so it is thwarted.
BTW, Sowell’s “Basic Economics” is a must-read for any person you care about.