POLITICS SIMPLIFIED: AUSTERITY IN

Since 2010, when the Conservatives were helped to power by their coalition partners, the Liberal Democrats, the government has pursued deep public spending cuts known as austerity. The government argued that these cutbacks were the only way that the UK could recover from the 2008 financial crash after bailing out the banks. However, unlike the economics textbook definition of austerity, these public spending cuts have not been accompanied by tax rises, instead, taxes have been cut for individuals and businesses.

Whilst the government celebrates employment growth it fails to acknowledge that wages are comparatively lower than before the financial crisis.

£40 million a year has been cut from the welfare budget since 2010. Central government funding for local councils has been slashed in half, whilst demand for services such as adult social care has risen. Even former Prime Minister David Cameron whose government brought about this austerity wrote to his local council in Oxfordshire. Cameron complained about the impact of these cuts to libraries, museums and services for the elderly. In the poorest areas of the country where councils rely more heavily on central government funding, the effects have been worse.

Shelter estimates that at least 1 in 200 people in Britain are homeless. In November 2018 the United Nations Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights reported that 20% of the UK population live in poverty. As a country with the fifth-largest economy, the report’s author argued that ‘poverty is a political choice’.

From the start of the twentieth-century life expectancies in England rose each year. However, since 2011 this progress in English life expectancies has slowed dramatically to a halt, with women in the most deprived areas having lost 0.3 years. The more deprived an area, the greater the proportion of the population’s life is spent in bad health and this has been to a greater extent since 2010. Professor Marmot, who discovered the scale of health inequality in the UK, argues that this has been caused by cuts to sure start centres, the education budget, poor housing quality and insecure employment contracts.

Is austerity over?

Some theorise that the effects of austerity drove the British public to ‘take back control’, voting to leave the European Union in 2016. Ironically the uncertainty surrounding Brexit could lead to further economic stagnation or depression. During the 2017 General Election Theresa May repeatedly announced that there was no ‘magic money tree’. That was her reply when she was asked whether it was acceptable that nurses were being forced to use foodbanks as a result of wage drops. However, at the Conservative Party Conference in 2018, Theresa May declared that austerity was over.

In February 2020 the fiscally conservative Chancellor Sajid Javid departed from Boris Johnson’s Cabinet. This followed clashes with the Prime Minister’s aide Dominic Cummings, signalling that public spending would increase.

WORDS BY PATRICK LOWE IMAGE BY NINA PANNONE