Extreme austerity on its way?

**On Monday (1st April) Britain changed. Huge cuts to welfare spending, including the hated ‘bedroom tax’, the 1% benefit cap that amounts to a real-terms cut, and reductions in council tax benefit amount to a systematic impoverishing of the poorest and most vulnerable in our society. At the same time, regulations designed to dismantle the National Health Service, allow private companies free reign and end its principle of doctors acting in the patient’s best interest rather than their own come into force. And all the time, huge cuts in government expenditure destroy the social fabric of the country and damage the very infrastructure needed for an economic recovery.**

It is therefore alarming to note that in comparison to some European countries, Britain’s experience of austerity has so far been mild. Greece is the most notable example, and Portugal is not far behind.

I was lucky enough to visit Lisbon, the Portuguese capital recently, and two thoughts struck me in particular. First, that it is a truly beautiful city with a fascinating history. Second, that it is rapidly falling apart. As one of the poorer nations in the Eurozone, Portugal has been forced into an incredibly harsh austerity programme, and as history should have taught us (and is now being made painfully clear) this has only made Portugal’s economic problems worse. Amid its stunning period architecture, I also found Lisbon full of poverty, condemned buildings, graffiti, homeless people sleeping under cardboard, and roads marred by potholes nearly a metre deep.

Not a day goes by in Lisbon without a protest against this injustice– whilst I was there I witnessed a protest from a military veterans’ group. Despite the public’s anger, the ruling centre-right Social Democrats are not far behind the opposition Socialist Party, who are disappointingly riven by internal divisions. This is partially due to the fact that it was the Socialists who initially implemented the austerity measures, although they now oppose them. The fates of the Portuguese Socialists, the PSOE in Spain and PASOK in Greece represent a cautionary tale for centre-left parties too scared to contradict the dominant austerity narrative.

{{ quote the self-defeating plans of the British government have actually increased the national debt }}

Many commentators have pointed out that as the British government’s self-defeating plans have actually increased the national debt, we have not actually been delivered with any austerity. However, in terms of the actual impact on everyone from the middle-classes downwards, this is far from the case. The government may be borrowing more to service the interest payments on their own failure, but the cuts to public services and social security to pay for this have had a real and painful impact.

And from Monday, all of this has just got a lot worse. Already we see the signs: public services struggling to cope, people having to make painful sacrifices, and crumbling infrastructure causing danger and inhibiting recovery. As the full weight of this increasingly damaging and dogmatic policy makes its impact, it is up to those of us who believe there is a positive, progressive alternative to make such a case.