UK Chancellor George Osborne announced last week that the Government is now forced to abandon its target to run a budget surplus by 2020. The project’s principal output, six years’ of austerity for the country’s people, has come to an end.[1]
Many, even on the Conservative backbenches, now question its utility. Growth in the UK stalled throughout the period, falling markedly below competitors in the global markets. The UK was positioned as the foremost adherent of this bastardised Keynesian policy which saw its own Government cannibalise its own functions in a maudlin effort to lose weight. Over the past six years spending fell 10% – similar crashes have been seen previously only in times of war or famine.
“It is frankly astonishing,” said one Tory backbencher, “that the bulldog spirit of this country could not be roused by such simple means. One wonders how we can compete in future on the global stage with such timidity.” But the Chair of his own Constituency Party countered, pointing out that the Government had failed abjectly in its provision of support to the area’s people. “Many of the people in this constituency own agribusinesses, not financial firms – this Government has quietly ignored their plight. When our workers’ homes were inundated some years back, did they care? Of course not – their only focus is London.”
For the past 6 years, with harm and humiliation dealt out to all but the rentier classes,…