Britain’s economic recovery overtakes Greece (but hardly anyone else)

Last year I updated figures from the World Bank which showed that Britain’s economic performance, while very bad in comparison to most other countries, stood some chance of overtaking Greece’s. We’ve now done so, but it’s hardly a cause for rejoicing. The table shows an index of Gross National Income per capita.  The sad fact is that Britain has not recovered from its deep economic slump, and that income per capita has not recovered to its level in 2008 or 2009.

2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013
Australia 100 103.47 109.79 117.65 141.9 155.5
Canada 100 96.39 99.52 104.83 117.28 120.87
Sweden 100 93.2 96.93 101.45 105.48 111.34
United States 100 95.95 98.89 101.52 104.66 107.3
Germany 100 100.16 101.91 104.24 103.63 105.76
Denmark 100 98.83 100.93 101.83 101.24 103.44
France 100 101.05 100.6 101.14 99.55 100.48
Belgium 100 98.96 101.79 101.79 99.58 100.47
Finland 100 97.04 98.27 99.6 97.87 98.48
Netherlands 100 99.53 99.51 101.7 96.85 95.5
Italy 100 99.47 99.41 98.69 94.63 93.52
Spain 100 100.91 98.74 96.99 94.54 94.02
United Kingdom 100 90.2 84.09 82.8 83.7 85.54
Greece 100 103.55 97.45 90.4 85.89 81.75

 

The UK Government uses two devices to make the figures look better than they are. One is to refer to national income  as a whole, rather than GNI or GDP per capita. The other is to choose 2010 as the start date, because the UK economy has grown (very slightly) since 2010, when most of others at the bottom of the table have shrunk.  While this has been going on,  Japan and Singapore have overtaken the UK at speed; countries which formerly had roughly comparable incomes, including Germany, Australia and Canada, have left the UK economy standing; and even France, which the British press is fond of representing as a basket case, sustained less damage in the crisis and has maintained higher income per capita throughout.  The spectacularly incompetent management of the UK economy by the current incumbents, who exacerbated the slump by withdrawing funds when they needed to be injecting resources, is a major part of the reason for its poor performance.

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