The British Chancellor George Osborne told the British people during his fiscal presentation yesterday that the “The sun is starting to shine – and we are fixing the roof”, which was code for the age of austerity is over. The problem with that narrative is that the sun over Britain is pretty weak, has been shining since 2012 when the British government deferred its austerity push when the nascent economic recovery it inherited tanked after its first fiscal exercise in June 2010. The strategy then was clear – they kept the fiscal deficit at relatively high levels (even if some of the shifting of expenditures etc cause inequities and undermines the prosperity of certain cohorts). Those deficits have supported growth over the last several years. But growth has also come from the stimulus the government gave to the housing sector (not the construction of houses but the churning of existing stock) in the 2012 and 2013 Fiscal Statements (aka the ‘Budget’). That growth strategy is ephemeral because the household sector can only absorb so much extra debt given its already highly indebted state. Overall, the fiscal narrative in Britain put out by the Conservatives is a lie. They have not created a nation of “Makers” and growth has not come from austerity. If you want to see what austerity does just look across the Channel to Italy, France, and, of course Greece. The UK has not demonstrated that austerity is a stimulus to growth.