Britain's bone-headed austerity debate

If just one debate had been sent by an angel to tell Britain how bone-headed its adversarial left-or-right, black-or-white political system is, it would surely be the austerity debate. One does not have to like or approve of George Osborne's attitude to the deficit, surely, to understand that his particular cuts programme is one of a quite large range of options that could have been chosen, and one, furthermore, that is not even anything like as neo-liberal as one that the chancellor would "ideally" have preferred. Instead, the situation is often presented as either-or: cut or spend. Osborne's opponents this week seemed almost disappointed that Britain's growth figures were not even worse, as if the complete failure of the chancellor's management would be prima facie confirmation of the great success that would have been achieved, if only their own ideas had been applied.