IT WAS meant to be the big policy idea of the 21st century – but now ridicule awaits any politician who suggests it.

Not long ago, the notion that the Government should concentrate on making us happier – rather than wealthier – was gaining ground fast.

After all, a welter of evidence has suggested our growing material riches are making us more miserable, not more contented.

Professor Richard Layard, a Labour peer and don at the London School of Economics, convinced some ministers it was now possible to measure happiness.

As a result, some schools focus on the "well-being" of their children, following something called the Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning programme.

The Office for National Statistics was said to be developing a measurement of well- being to rival GDP per head – as was the Government of France.

Our own Angela Eagle, the Wallasey MP and a Treasury minister, waxed lyrical about studying "bliss points" as an economic student.

During a Commons debate on how to make us happier, she told MPs: "Finding society’s bliss point is what all governments wish to do."

Then came the economic crash. More than ever, we wanted the Government to save our jobs, homes and livelihoods – not put smiles on our faces.

Even David Cameron – who once urged us to "let sunshine win the day" – has ditched the positive vibe for a more gloomy public image.

And yet . . . once the recession is over, can we really expect to go back to lives of high-spending and keeping up with the Joneses?

Catch ministers in a quiet corridor and, in hushed tones, they will tell you the answer is no. That the slump is the start of a more austere age.

Even when the economy bounces back, there will be a huge hangover of debt to be repaid – which means fewer foreign holidays and new cars.

The Government is still running pilot projects – in South Tyneside, Manchester and Hertfordshire – to find ways of cheering us up.

So, perhaps a "well-being index" could still be the next big policy idea – once we are out of our current misery.

However, I’m not certain about Professor’s Layard’s calculation of the level above which a higher income makes us less happy. It’s around £14,000.

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AFTER cowering when an Iraqi journalist threw shoes at him, George Bush remarked: "I don’t know what his beef is."

This may be a wild punt, but could it possibly be that his country was invaded illegally and hundreds of thousands of people slaughtered?

Just 34 more days of Bush – now there’s something to make us all happier.