So, what was austerity all about then?

[Doucas]

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.

Complete rubbish, we had the slowest recovery because of austerity. The economy is not a household budget, in order to grow it you need to invest in it, if you make cuts like our current government did well you see why we've performed so badly over the past decade.