Austerity politics, then and now

Other countries, such as Greece, needed to have a full-blown crisis in order to prompt such adjustment measures, whereas Britain was acting prudently and preemptively. If Britain, with a relatively low share of public debt to GDP (64.6%) is worried, the implication is that many other countries should be much more concerned.

But drastic attempts at fiscal consolidation immediately evoke memories of the Great Depression. Andrew Mellon, the United States Treasury Secretary at the time, talked about liquidating workers, farmers, stocks, and real estate in order "to purge the rottenness out of the system." In Britain back then, Philip Snowden, a small man with a narrow, pinched face, who needed a cane to walk, seemed to want to remake the British economy in his physical image.