Unfortunately it is a trend
It is, as we always say, a mistake to read too much into one month’s figures, so let us look at the trend for GDP growth.
It has grown by 0.2% in last month but fell in the previous month and is a grand total of 1% higher than it was one year ago.
The 1% figure is the really worrying one because it is pathetic and seems to be slowing down, we are as the analysts say “failing to maintain our momentum”.
If growth of 1% a year is momentum, I’d hate to see inertia and it perfectly illustrates the problems that the new Labour government has inherited. A very long trend of weak, inconsistent growth, with few if any signs of animal spirits, and very little to suggest that things will change.
Where is the training and investment needed to stimulate growth? Where is the pent up demand? Where is the export boom?
They are nowhere to be seen, Rachel Reeves is going to have to pull some rabbits out of the hat during the budget but that will not be enough.
This slough of despond is not just down to Brexit, or under investment or low skills, this has been going on for 14 years now and we have performed far worse than our rivals.
Just ask yourself who will base themselves in the UK after Brexit, who looks at the collapse of HS2 and says “that’s the place for me”, who looks at the skills shortages in construction and says “let’s build in Britain” or looks at the planning system or broadband and heads the UK?
Earlier this week some on the far right were boasting that tougher visa rules had led to a reduction in immigration because fewer foreign students were coming to study here. Great, let’s screw the further education sector too, why not?
You don’t have to be a Keynes or a Galbraith to see that this is part of a trend of self-harm, pushed by incompetent, ultra Tories backed by the far right, which has damaged the country, almost beyond repair.
Just for a start why don’t we remove foreign students from the immigration figures unless they stay on after university? And then boost the education sector, one of our few world beating industries, rather than shackling it because you want to pander to tattooed thugs.
It is just a start but it all counts, breaking trends in economics is difficult, but it can be done.
Economics, trade and Brexit, not necessarily in that order but the dog always comes first.
By Jonty Bloom Media
Surely the Labour government's biggest problem is with those on the more traditionally anti-EU Left of the Party. Those who tend to hold the luminaries of the past (Bevin, Benn, Foot etc.) in infallible, god-like esteem.
Little Britain, with inflated ambitions to lord it over one and all, and tell everyone how to run (ruin) their affairs, isn't just a Tory thing.
It's not just modern Tories who've failed to understand that immigration and EU citizens' reciprocal rights (FOM) aren't the same thing.
Here's a reminder that Labour became just as much of a Brexit party as the Tories... https://labourlist.org/2019/04/labour-confirms-it-wants-to-end-freedom-of-movement/
And while the face of Labour may have changed, the substance hasn't really moved on that much.
Agree....but there you go again with the tattoos. There may well be a Venn diagram that demonstrates a connection between tattoos and thugs......but presumably not all thugs have tattoos (consider the thuggishness of some Tory MPs or, say, Trump) and certainly not everyone who has a tattoo is a thug. Appreciate this is a matter of no importance btw but glad to have finally got this off my (as yet un-tattooed) chest.