The coalition government took office in 2010 determined to tackle the nation’s budget deficit. At the time, the government was borrowing in excess of £150 billion each year which it felt threatened the nation’s credit rating and hence its ability to borrow in the future. This in turn would put upward pressure on interest rates and hence restrict future economic growth. It therefore launched a historic programme of austerity with the ambitious aim of eliminating the budget deficit by 2015.
While admitting that austerity measures would cause economic pain for UK citizens, David Cameron insisted that the pain would be spread — that we would all be ‘in it together’. Three years into the austerity programme, critics claim that, instead, austerity has in fact amounted to ‘punishing the poor for the mistakes of the rich’ (especially rich bankers) and even ‘punishing women for the mistakes of men’.
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