On Sunday, Labour’s Anneliese Doddstweeted that the UK ‘had the worst recession and the worst growth of any major economy last year’, and that ‘Covid closed much of our economy, but the Conservatives crashed it’. Of course, this is just a tweet and almost all politicians try to score points in this way. Nonetheless, it was still pretty sloppy.
The Shadow Chancellor was citing the latest IMFestimates for GDP growth in the G7 economies in 2020, rather than the actual data. The official numbers have either not been published (we have to wait until 12th February for the UK), or are slightly different. But the IMF probably wasn’t far wrong (UK GDP is indeed likely to have fallen by about 10%), so I’ll let that pass.
The real issue is how the data have been spun. For a start, rather than contrast the UK with the US…
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