Was austerity necessary?

It WAS necessary, due to the inept and childish fiscal policy of successive Labour governments who seemed to believe that spending HUGE amounts of money to please (bribe??) as many people as possible to remain in office for as long as possible, is the best thing for our country and not caring one iota what happens subsequently. Utterly woeful and irresponsible to an entire nation. Shameful.
A new government eventually gets into power and has to sort out the whole sorry mess, making them unpopular, but saving the country from bankruptcy
And this happens every single generation. When will people learn??
There is only one group of people more stupid than Labour politicians......the people who vote for them.

No, it wasn’t necessary. All governments need do is redistribute wealth more evenly. More to the point, the events that lead to recession are very preventable — to the extent that it’s only a matter of controlling greed.

No and no because aggregate demand.