Osborne proves that austerity is about ideology, not evidence

Last month, it was revealed that research by Professors Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff – used to fuel the austerity consensus – had been debunked, after a student noticed that they hadn’t done their sums right.

That should have been a blow to politicians like George Osborne, who have used their research to justify swinging cuts in public spending. Earlier this month Reinhart and Rogoff formally corrected their error.

Yet this morning when George Osborne – who is doing a rare round of interviews – was questioned about their research, he rallied to the defence of the under fire academics, telling The Today Programme:

“We need more time to dispute your complete dismissal of the work of Ken Rogoff and Carmen Reinhart. They made a very substantial contribution to our understanding of the impact of banking crises on economies and indeed you could argue that they were clear about the consequences for the UK of what went wrong.”

Forget the bungled research, George Osborne is standing by the evidence that he likes, whether it proves to be correct or not – because his austerity is about ideology, not evidence.