Austerity has only worked in the same way as destroying their banks rather than bailing them out worked for Iceland, which is to say that if you knock your economy back hard enough then it's easier to get some growth as you claw your way backup. The UK economy fell further and recovered more slowly than our competitors, and the recovery that was beginning around 2010 was snuffed out by the beginning of austerity. If you look at total GDP performance since May 2008 rather than what's going on now, we perform terribly.