Quote Originally Posted by the other bob wilson View Post
I was half listening to a budget discussion on the radio this morning and heard someone talking about annual interest payments on the UK National debt where someone said it was either eighteen or eighty billion pounds and no one contradicted him. I’ve not come across anything yet confirming which of the two figures are right, but I feel it must be eighteen, rather than eighty surely.

Even so, eighteen billion is shocking after a ten year programme of austerity which we were told was to “balance the books” on the huge debt left by the last Labour Government - well, that went well didn’t it!

https://www.statista.com/statistics/...ebt-as-gdp-uk/

After looking at that chart, my question is, what was the point of austerity?
They were likely referring to the percentage of GDP that is national debt - ie, if GDP is £1000m and debt is £800m then the level is 80%. It's considered important to keep it within this, what is deemed manageable level. I have to say, I'm not entirely sure why, as whilst the most relatively indebted country may be that perennial failure that is Venezuela, the US and Japan are also well above us. You can see the list of all countries debt to GDP ratios here: https://tradingeconomics.com/country...nt-debt-to-gdp

Nonetheless, the problem is that under the Global Financial Crisis (not caused by Labour although they may be guilty of a failure to prepare) the debt rose from about 30% to 70% of GDP in three years. Austerity helped arrest that decline and it stabilised until Covid fkd it up again

You can see it here: https://tradingeconomics.com/united-...nt-debt-to-gdp

and here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United...%20that%20time).

The point of austerity was to address that rather dramatic and unsustainable rise and had we not done so our debt and debt to GDP ratio would undoubtedly be higher. I guess the debate is whether that matters or whether it does but austerity still went too far.

Personally I think the books needed balancing and some fat probably did need cutting off some parts of the public sector, but I think it went on too long.