Warning: austerity can seriously damage your health

David McCoy's penultimate paragraph (in the print edition) is the only one that matters in his review of Stuckler and Basu's book.

"...a more political interpretation of the policy of austerity would be to view it as a tool by which a financial crisis has been exploited to privatise state assets and further shift wealth from the majority to a minority."

That is indeed what austerity is all about, and there is little evidence that the lot of the disadvantaged is going to get better any time soon. Iain Duncan Smith doesn't even need evidence in his support, as it is sufficient for him to say that he "believes it to be true" that his changes have increased the number of people seeking employment. If government does not protect the powerless against the powerful, then it has failed. On almost every count, this government has failed, and is continuing to fail. Sadly, there is little hope that any future government, of whatever colour, is likely to do better. Future historians will have to analyse why.