I’ve just got back from a couple of weeks holidaying above the Arctic Circle, visiting the world’s northern-most towns. Although I was too late to enjoy the midnight sun, even in August night time lasted only a few hours. The locals, however, spoke ominously of “the dark time” – winter months devoid of any daylight with inland temperatures dropping to minus 50 degrees centigrade. This annual test of endurance is tough on mind and body, with many people suffering the torment of seasonally induced depression.

Returning home to a comparatively balmy Britain seems all sweetness and light. After what I gather was a disappointingly wet month, early September is dry, warm and bright. The economic news is also a bit better. The economy grew fairly rapidly in the second quarter of the year and the jobs market has stabilised. Yet, despite this, there is an undercurrent of unease. Most of the current economic momentum is the result of the fiscal stimulus applied by the former Labour government. While employers are replacing departing staff, few are increasing their workforce. And above all everyone knows that the coalition government is about to make an unprecedentedly deep cut in public spending and raise VAT.

It’s difficult to see how the coming fiscal squeeze will have anything but a depressing impact on the economy. In my opinion, the deficit is being cut too much too quickly, with political ideology trumping economic logic. Keynes taught us in the 1930s that monetary policy alone cannot guarantee growth in a credit constrained economy bedevilled by weak business investment and poor consumer confidence. Fiscal policy must remain supportive for as long as it takes for confidence to be restored.

Government ministers disparagingly call adherents to this Keynesian argument “deficit deniers”. This is unfair. I’m as concerned about the deficit as the next person. But the risk is that doing too much too quickly will wreck the economic recovery and make the deficit worse, not better. The political narrative that there is no alternative to immediate slash-and-burn economics deserves to be challenged.

The overall effect will be to hurt us all – and as the Institute for Fiscal Studies tells us, those already at the bottom of the income scale will suffer most of all. Without a change of heart in government – which at present is politically inconceivable – our country is about to suffer a serious bout of fiscally induced depression. Unemployment will rise, especially in those areas of the UK most dependent on public spending; living standards will be squeezed; and the social fabric will come under greater strain than for any time in a generation. We face an economic version of “the dark time” – God help those whose endurance will be tested beyond limit.