Has GDP growth come at the wrong time for Labour?

Coffee House Shots

The Spectator

News, Daily News, Politics

4.4 • 2.2K Ratings

🗓️ 15 August 2024

⏱️ 11 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The broader story this morning paints a positive picture for the UK economy. While growth in June took a pause, growth in Q2 for this year is estimated to be 0.6 per cent, roughly in line with what markets were predicting, as forecasts for UK growth have been repeatedly revised upwards since the start of the year. Growth was 0.8 per cent in the three months to May, indicating the positive upward trend only paused at the start of the summer. This sounds like great news, but has it come at the right time for Labour?

Today we have also had A Level results and top marks have risen despite a return to pre-pandemic levels. What do the numbers say?

James Heale speaks to Farser Nelson and Kate Andrews.

Produced by Oscar Edmondson.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	The Spectator magazine is home to wonderful writing, insightful analysis and unrivaled books and arts reviews.
0:06.0	Subscribe today for just 12 pounds and receive a 12 week subscription in print and online,
0:11.4	along with a free 20 pound John Lewis or waitress voucher.
0:15.0	Go to Spectator.co. UK forward slash voucher.
0:18.0	Hello welcome to coffeehouse shots. I'm James Heel and I'm joined today by Kate Andrews and
0:26.2	Fraser Nelson. Now Kate you write on coffee house today that today's GDP figures are both good
0:31.0	and bad news for labour. Tell us why.
0:33.1	Well, it's good news, broadly speaking.
0:35.5	The month of June, not so great, the economy flatlined,
0:38.4	but as we say on this podcast, remind our listeners,
0:41.7	from time to time, you can only glean so much from
0:43.8	monthly data and there was reason in June that things had a bit of a stall
0:48.7	the general election meant that a lot of businesses were putting off spending
0:52.4	and decision-making and consumers to some extent were as well until they knew that result and also you had the industrial action that
0:58.5	NHS and the junior doctors were on strike once again in the days leading up to Polling Day. The broader
1:05.6	picture however is really positive. The economy in the second quarter of the
1:09.7	year grew by 0.6%.
1:13.0	This was roughly in line with what markets were predicting,
1:15.0	but these are relatively new predictions.
1:17.0	This is much better than was expected
1:20.0	at the start of the year.
1:21.0	I think the broad story of the year so far seems to be that growth was far
	...

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