UK Economy headed for depression

Well, that is what has to happen now that they've announced that they are:

cutting 500,000 government jobs, slashing spending by 25 percent, including a 19 percent cut in welfare spending, and changing the state pension age for men and women to 66 by the year 2020.

I guess this should be called de-stimulus. Think of all that money that's going to be "taken out of the economy". And what's going to happen to economic growth when the "multiplier" is applied to a negative number? Are they crazy? Haven't the Brits read Paul Krugman?

[Update]
Predictably, Krugman is now saying that the UK is likely headed toward a severe recession.

What happens now? Maybe Britain will get lucky, and something will come along to rescue the economy. But the best guess is that Britain in 2011 will look like Britain in 1931, or the United States in 1937, or Japan in 1997. That is, premature fiscal austerity will lead to a renewed economic slump. As always, those who refuse to learn from the past are doomed to repeat it.

Jeremy Warner has this response in the UK Telegraph:

The big point missed by those who think elevated public debt doesn’t matter is that these periods of excessive debt utterly crippled the UK economy. Indeed, Britain’s decline through the twentieth century as an economic superpower directly correlates with increased indebtedness.