Dean Baker has noted a common bit of conservative propaganda, UK Conservatives Redefine Success Downward. What has been going on is that the conservative government under George Osborne has imposed harsh austerity on the country since 2010. Even though the economy was terribly depressed, the government went along with Alberto Alesina’s loony idea that less spending and higher taxes would be good for growth. The results were predictable for anyone but the true believers: the recovery stalled and they had a double dip recession.

After almost three years of this policy not working, the government reversed course. And the economy bounced back substantially. So now Osborne is running around claiming that the government was right to impose austerity on the country. Paul Krugman wrote earlier this week, “If I keep hitting myself in the head with a baseball bat, and then I stop, I will start to feel better; this doesn’t mean that hitting yourself in the head with a baseball bat is a good thing.” And that’s a very good analogy.

Osborne specifically mentioned that last year the UK investment spending rose 8.8%, four times the 2.2% rate in the US. But as Baker pointed out, you can’t just pick a good year and claim that everything is great—especially when it is clearly the result of you not doing the thing you now claim was good. He provided the following graph that in addition to everything else, shows that the UK hasn’t even made it back to pre-crisis levels of investment spending:

This is why it is almost impossible to have political debates: if a government pushes bad policy long enough, things will work out. Often that’s the case when the bad policy clearly doesn’t work, so it is changed. Even after this, the Osborne government claims they are vindicated when the lack of their policies improve the situation. It’s just hopeless.