Austerity Britain

Austerity Britain was the time around 2008 to 2010 where the UK’s economy was being heavily affected by the Great Recession of 2008. This was a time when public spending in the country was reduced by a significant amount to try and tackle the decline of the nation’s GDP. Both British governments at the time (Brown; 2008-May 2010, Cameron; May 2010-2016) implemented these plans to try and stop the fall of the pound. Fortunately, the UK wasn’t hit the worst by the Great Recession as countries like Ukraine and the Baltic States were hit even harder than them, but at least they didn’t print billion-dollar notes like Botswana did as a result of the Recession. The reason Britain’s GDP didn’t fall by a drastic amount was because of the governments decisions to increase taxes and spending cuts which kept their economy afloat.

However, people did criticise these plans because some people thought that the plans would only worsen the economy and suggest that they should just leave it for the near future. Others thought they should do one after the other, saying that increasing taxes and spend cuts could not happen at the same time. The video link below, even though its from an American POV, gives detail about what the Recession was like; The reason for this was because America and he UK got hit by the Recession as bad as each other.