Sometimes I wonder about people who make such transparently incorrect statements like “there was no austerity”. When confronted with the data like you provided do they actually absorb that information? Usually it seems the answer is no but I don’t understand how you internalise it in a way that doesn’t conflict with your priors.

Government spending actually went up during that period. See chart 1: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/public-spending-sta...

You can try and redefine austerity into whatever best fits your politics if you like.

Well done on redefining austerity.