Indeed, sustaining such high levels of unemployment had boosted unemployment transfers and worsened the deficit. This made any effort by the British state to borrow its way out of trouble ever more treacherous since doing so required further rounds of austerity policies to reduce the deficits that prior rounds of austerity had caused, so that Britain could be eligible for more loans to reduce the deficit. By 1931, Britain's austerity policies had become self-defeating.

Mark Blyth, Austerity, loc. 516