Abstract
This chapter explores the continuities and discontinuities in UK economic policy and performance during the tenure of three different Prime Ministers (David Cameron, Theresa May and Boris Johnson) and three different Chancellors of the Exchequer (George Osborne, Philip Hammond and Sajid Javid) in fewer than five years. It argues that both the central UK economic policy choices during this period, namely expansionary fiscal consolidation (commonly referred to as ‘austerity’) and Brexit itself, constituted major steps backwards for UK economic performance. Neither policy addressed the principal cause of the UK’s longer-term relative economic decline, and its experience of stagnating productivity, real wages and living standards in the 12 years following the 2007–2008 financial crisis, namely a failure of both public sector and private business investment to match the levels sustained by their Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) competitors.
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Lee, S. (2023). Two Steps Backwards: UK Economic Policy in the Ages of Austerity and Brexit, 2015–2020. In: Beech, M., Lee, S. (eds) Conservative Governments in the Age of Brexit. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-21464-6_7
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