The Office for National Statistics issued new provisional GDP figures for October 2023 this morning. These are their charts. The first shows the longer term trend:
This chart shows movements over the last year, by sector:
The message is pretty simple, and so is straightforward to interpret. The UK economy is, using this measure, staggering along. Every sector is struggling. The only winner is the Bank of England, whose attempts to deliver a recession appear to be working.
This is another fine mess that failed economic thinking has got us into.
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With population growth of (about) 0.5% this means declining GDP per capita…. and that is before mentioning the usual problems with GDP data (it only measures what we spend, not what we spend ON).
Grim.
My frontline experience mirrors this at work in the public sector.
We have so much to do now that if you go on holiday or are sick, things just stop. Everything seems to be backing up in the public sector. Those councils for example making cuts because they are essentially bankrupt are another symptom and thus things will get worse.
The private sector will pore over these loses and go in only if it gets its hands on assets or sweetheart deals from the Tories (like our railways are propped up by them etc).
And the Tory wrecking ball staggers on, defying gravity because of its rich funders in high places.
And as for Labour………………………….?
My local council is proposing to slash spending by making 80 workers redundant mainly affecting adult and child care services to bring down their budget deficit but are still proposing an increase in council tax next April by up to 5%. I have written to their communications officer asking whether balancing the books is more important than providing adequate public services. I await his reply(if any) with interest.
The trouble is that councils have to make cuts, having limited revenue-raising powers (caps on general council tax and little else significant to put charges on); limited borrowing ability; and unlike national government, no monetary sovereignty. They’re being (and have been for years) impoverished by central government funding cuts. That said, some (such as mine, with a then Labour majority) have made bad operational decisions such as naïve private contracts for major services such as waste, roads maintenance etc by which they’re now being exploited.
It’s long struck me that UK local authorities have faced one of the grossest injustices in economics, and that injustice has massively increased since Osborne’s austerity. Central funding has been slashed, their responsibilities have increased, and Government blames them when they cut services and/or run deficits!
The Tories will keep piling on the misery until the dead bodies cause a revolution. The worst thing is that ‘Tory’ has become a catch-all phrase that now includes Labour.
Sky news used these graphs this morning.
I heard PMQs as I was driving. Sunak lives in a different world.
I think more and more people will decide which is more accurate.