PREDICTING the end of austerity after an election victory for the party that campaigned on being more austere than the other austerity party may seem a little strange. You might actually think it’s wishful thinking, but we may be about to see a change in political economic thinking to match the anti-austerity credo already dominating the economics community.

If you believed the Twitter trolls, then my views on austerity damaging economic growth belong on the lunatic fringe of economic commentary. However, although anti-austerity is certainly not yet part of the political mainstream in the UK, it is very much aligned with the views of most eminent economics and global economic bodies. Earlier this year the Centre for Macroeconomics surveyed leading economists and found that two out of three disagreed with the proposition that the coalition Government’s policies since 2010 “have had a positive effect” on the economy.

Only 15 per cent thought that austerity had had a positive effect, but none agreed strongly with that proposition. You could argue cuts were a necessity in the immediate aftermath of the crash to avoid a market collapse, but not for the last few years. Several of the world’s leading economists have been scathing, with Steve Keen calling George Osborne’s fixation with balancing the budget as having a “kindergarten level understanding of economics” and Paul Krugman writing that “harsh austerity in depressed economies isn’t necessary, and does major damage when it is imposed”.

Indeed, this week the OECD, in its latest Economic Outlook report, stated that “global growth in the first quarter of 2015 was weaker than in any quarter since the crisis and that productivity growth continues to disappoint, reflecting in part tepid business investment which has weakened the spread of new technologies”. It added: “Increases in capital spending are needed to push economies onto a higher growth path. For policy makers, translating investment into sustained growth also requires paying attention to low-wage workers, as well as tackling the consequences of rising inequality for education, a key factor undermining growth in the longer-term.”

OK, so the crisis is over, we are in recovery mode and we need to increase capital expenditure, invest in education in poorer communities and pay low-wage workers more. Well, the problem is that the UK just gave a mandate to the Tories to deepen austerity when it’s not only not necessary, but actually likely to be counter-productive.

There are policies we could adopt, such as targeted capital expenditure allowances that would encourage business to spend, knowing they would benefit further down the line. Increasing research tax credits would stimulate productivity and, as I pointed out last week, raising the minimum wage to the living wage would be worth £1 billion a year to Scotland’s budget in both increased taxes and savings on benefits.

All of those suggestions are in line with the OECD advice on stimulating growth, but increasing Government expenditure in the short term to generate longer-term revenue growth is not possible under austerity.

Although the general election provided a mandate for cuts in England, there is no such mandate in Scotland. Even so, the powers to follow an anti-austerity budget will not be devolved.

Earlier this week, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) published research that suggested austerity measures in the short term to deal with the UK’s debt mountain may do more harm than good. It seems that living with large debt in order to protect people-led economic growth has to become the new normal. The IMF report states the “optimal” policy involved “living with high debt”. That is preferable to introducing “policies to deliberately pay down the debt” because the costs were likely to outweigh the benefits – as the money has to be cut elsewhere.

So where did this obsession for austerity come from? Keynesian economics used to dominate economic thinking and, in a nutshell, it supported increased government spending in times of recession to stimulate growth. This was most aptly characterised in Roosevelt’s New Deal, credited with America’s long-term recovery from the Great Depression. His focus on the “3 Rs”: relief, recovery, and reform contrast starkly with the UK government's “3 Cs”: cuts, caution and carelessness. Thatcher raged against public sector waste and I admit it there was low efficiency in increased spend when the public sector was as bloated and badly managed as it was in the 1970s. But different era, different public sector.

The current austerity doctrine has been driven by an influential paper by two American economists, Reinhart and Rogoff, that demonstrated that public debt of more than 90 per cent of GDP slows growth. Their work was cited by the IMF and the UK Treasury in initial justifications of austerity policies that have driven poverty, unemployment, benefits cuts and a plethora of anti-cuts protests.

Now, all of that might have been worth it had it stopped another massive collapse in the economy, but Reinhart and Rogoff’s work hasn’t just been debunked, they themselves have admitted it was wron,g after Thomas Herndon, a PhD economics student writing an essay on their report, found basic errors in the spreadsheet.

So, summing up, 66 per cent of the UK’s leading economists believe that austerity has actually harmed the economy and most of the world’s leading economists think austerity is daft. The OECD and the IMF are calling for investment to grow and the original report that suggested austerity was required was just wrong. The UK, however, is committed to austerity and is seeing deflation and low growth, including the biggest slump in service sector performance since 2011 and a widening trade deficit due to the comparative strength of the pound. Will the Tories now rein back on austerity claiming they have sorted the economy so no longer need to cut so deep? If not, then it is Cameron, Osborne and the Treasury that will be left sitting on the lunatic fringe of global economic policy thinking.