In some ways they’re arguing that austerity wasn’t aggressive enough to get the job done properly.
Comment on Broken Britain: what went wrong?
hellothere@sh.itjust.works 9 months ago
Now then, while this is possibly the closest I’ve seen the Spectator come to admitting that austerity is a complete failure, they will always come up short of fully admitting that the reason Britain is fucked right now is because of the economic philosophy they vocally advocated for.
They and their ilk are what broke it.
burningmatches@feddit.uk 9 months ago
hellothere@sh.itjust.works 9 months ago
There is definitely some memory holing going on, the bit implying capex cuts were used to fund increases in opex expenditure like pay rises is pure fantasy. Anyone who isn’t looking to be lied to knows that the current pay crisis in the public sector is due to a decade of pay cuts, not rises.
The reality of course being situations where councils had to maintain mandatory service provision, and their opex budgets had also been cut in to the bone, requiring further cuts to capex to allow a transfer of cash from one to the other.
JoBo@feddit.uk 9 months ago
Exactly. They’re implying the money went on pay instead when public sector workers are earning around 25% less in real terms compared to 2010.
The money went on subsidies and tax cuts for the super-rich. Mostly invisible tax cuts via cutting funding for HMRC. Yes, the only revenue-generating department got cuts under ‘austerity’. It was not austerity, it was banditry.