A few weeks before the 2010 General Election, Governor of the Bank of England, Sir Mervyn King told the American economist David Hale that whoever won the election would make themselves so unpopular because of austerity cuts that they would be out of power for a generation.
Interestingly, austerity was not the only option, and arguably should not have been an option at all. Financial crises in other places and at other times have clearly demonstrated that Keynsian demand-side expansionist policies kick-start economies, whereas austerity and cuts strangle the genesis of economic growth.
Given the lessons of history and a prescient warning from Mervyn King we might wonder why Cameron, Clegg, Osborne & co. have taken their chosen path. The question is easily answered of course, when we see that over the past 4 years the winners have been the 1% over the 99%. This sounds like a cliche and I only wish that it were.
This coalition government decided very early on that this might be their last chance of power for some time and have abandoned any sense of decorum in their indecent haste to fill the pockets of their paymasters.
The ideological fervour of sticking to the principles of neoliberalism, together with a last chance smash & grab asset stripping agenda have damaged the UK economically, socially & politically, and it will take a long time to set it right again.
The Cameron-Clegg administration will be remembered as possibly the worst UK government ever. The irony is that they think they have weakened democracy in the UK, but history will show that the reaction to this Orwellian nightmare will be demands for a new political settlement, based in challenges to the inequalities we now recognise as being the drivers for many of our economic and social ills.
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