Austerity ended as long ago as 2018. (You can tell because the roads are so smooth and no one ever has to wait for a place in a care home.)
Ever since Theresa May and her chancellor, Philip Hammond, declared that the cuts were over ahead of the autumn Budget that year, we’ve heard variations on this sentiment from subsequent leaders. During the first pandemic summer in 2020, Boris Johnson promised: “We are absolutely not going back to the austerity of ten years ago.”
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