This is a good, balanced and well-argued "defense" of austerity by @MrRBourne. Good start: he admits scaremongering about the gilts markets was wrong, both theoretically and empirically and that many (most?) public spending cuts were damaging (1/3?) https://twitter.com/MrRBourne/status/1283851044435496960

He then argues "restraint then has granted more financial freedom now." Not quantified/evidenced. If debt/GDP ratio in Feb 2020 was 10% higher, would we be much more constrained? Why? [by contrast, if that money had been well spent, we might have been better prepared!] (2/3)

Finally, he accepts that GDP/wage growth after austerity was "absysmal", leading to a "lost decade" in living standards. But argues higher spending wouldn't have helped (much). Fair point - we don't know the counterfactual. But he's got the burden of proof wrong IMO (3/4)

If we *had* spent another 10% of GDP (random figure for illustration) & it had boosted level of output by just 0.5% it would have paid for itself several times over with change. We'll never know for sure. But ex post austerity looks just as big a mistake as it was ex ante (4/4)

[PS. Credit to @MrRBourne for admitting that he (&, more so, other proponents of austerity) got some things wrong. Those of us on other side should do so too - in particular, I and others were too pessimistic about unemployment and, therefore, likely scarring effects.]