Is our economy OK?

Coffee House Shots

The Spectator

News, Daily News, Politics

4.4 • 2.2K Ratings

🗓️ 10 February 2023

⏱️ 11 minutes

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Summary

New GDP figures show that the UK economy narrowly avoided recession at the end of 2022. Between the final quarter and the third quarter of last year, there was no change in the economy's output. Is this really good news? And do GDP figures matter if people still feel poorer?

Max Jeffery speaks to Kate Andrews and James Heale.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This episode is sponsored by Canacor Genuity Wealth Management, experienced wealth planners and
0:05.6	investment managers who offer unwavering support in challenging times. Visit kandilwealth.com for more
0:11.9	information.
0:16.9	Hello and welcome to Coffee How Shots, the spectators daily politics podcast. I'm Max Jeffery and I'm
0:22.2	joined by Kate Andrews and James Heel. The latest GDP figures for the end of 2022 came out today,
0:29.6	Kate, what was the news? So the UK has narrowly avoided the technical definition of recession
0:36.6	by showing that in Q4 last year between October and December, we had virtually no growth.
0:42.1	Very hard to claim that is good news, but a lot of people will because they were expecting a
0:46.0	contraction and to meet the technical definition for session. That's two quarters of negative
0:50.9	contraction in a row. So, you know, government will probably be quite delighted that they're
0:56.3	able to bring in other talking points, which James can address rather than having to address this,
1:01.0	you know, word recession. But as I point out on coffee house today, there's some really bad news in
1:06.6	these figures as well. So we also got the breakdown for the month of December on its own in which the
1:11.2	economy contracted by 0.5%. And if you put that in context of December 2021 the year before,
1:17.8	we actually did worse this past December than we did in 2021 by about 0.1%. That is, of course,
1:24.0	when the Omicron wave was coming, people were still required to self isolate. If they had COVID,
1:29.0	people were voluntarily going inside and isolating to think that we had a December that was
1:34.0	worse than the one before, comparatively, is really difficult to take in. And of course,
1:39.2	there's plenty of reason to think that in 2023, we're going to have far more problems. A lot of
1:43.4	those COVID giveaways, I've already worked themselves through the system. The energy price guarantee is
1:47.8	going to be far less generous, come April. So a lot of that additional income that people
1:52.6	either saved or got from the government is going to be spent and it's not coming again. And we
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