Beware statistical quirks — they may not tell the whole story
Achieving the fastest growth in the G7 — America, Japan, Germany, France, the UK, Italy and Canada — was once a key Labour target, though it now appears to have been watered down, and this appears to suggest almost an instant achievement.
Hang on a second, though. Did not the Tory government also claim to have achieved the fastest growth rate in the G7? It did indeed, before attacking the Labour government for snuffing it out.
In both cases, GDP (gross domestic product) figures for the first quarter of the year provided room to boast. GDP rose by a hefty 0.9 per cent in the first quarter of last year, and one official statistician said the economy was going 'gangbusters'. It rose by 0.7 per cent in the first quarter of this year, a figure that may be revised higher when second-quarter figures are released on August 14.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Guardian
3 minutes ago
- The Guardian
US envoy to Israel taunts Starmer and likens Gaza assault to Dresden bombing
The US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, has launched an undiplomatic attack on Keir Starmer by invoking the allied second world war bombing of Dresden after the British prime minister criticised the Israeli security cabinet's decision to expand the war in Gaza. 'So Israel is expected to surrender to Hamas & feed them even though Israeli hostages are being starved?' Huckabee wrote on social media in response to a post by Starmer calling for an immediate ceasefire and lamenting the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, as well as the fate of the remaining Israeli hostages being held by Hamas. Provocatively, Huckabee added: 'Did UK surrender to Nazis and drop food to them? 'Ever heard of Dresden, PM Starmer? That wasn't food you dropped. If you had been PM then UK would be speaking German!' The bombing of Dresden by the RAF and US air force in February 1945 is believed to have killed tens of thousands of civilians. It remains one of the most controversial allied acts of the second world war, amid question marks over its strategic necessity and the widespread destruction in civilian areas. Huckabee, who became the first evangelical Christian to be Washington's envoy to Israel after Donald Trump nominated him following last November's presidential election, did not leave it at that. In a follow-up post, he wrote: 'How much food has Starmer and the UK sent to Gaza?' He claimed Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's prime minister, had sent 2m tons of food to Gaza, 'none of it even getting to hostages', making an apparent reference to unsupported claims that Hamas is intercepting deliveries and hoarding aid. 'Maybe UK PM ought to sit this one out & follow Arab League who said Hamas should disarm & release ALL hostages immediately.' The ambassador's blunt comments went well beyond the public remarks of Trump when he met Starmer at Turnberry in Scotland last month. The US president declined to criticise Starmer in his presence after it emerged that Britain was preparing to recognize Palestinian statehood in the absence of a ceasefire in Gaza. Huckabee, a former Republican presidential candidate, has a history of making intemperate comments in Israel's favour. In 2008, he said 'there's really no such thing as a Palestinian'. He has also declined to use the term West Bank, claimed by Palestinians a territory for part of a future state – instead referring to the territory by the biblical name of Judea and Samaria, which is used by Israel. He has also declined to call Israeli settlements in the territory by that name, insisting on calling them 'communities'. In June, he told the BBC that Muslim countries should provide the land for a Palestinian state. 'At what point does it have to be in the same piece of real estate that Israel occupies?' he said. 'Muslim countries have 644 times the amount of land that are controlled by Israel. So maybe if there is such a desire for the Palestinian state, there would be someone who would say we'd like to host it.
Telegraph
3 minutes ago
- Telegraph
Labour's war on Middle England risks ruin
It does not require a great deal of experience of human nature to note that people work so that they, or their families, might benefit from their labour. It does not require a great deal of mathematical skill, either, to observe that if you divide the outputs of individual's work among the 28 million households in Britain, that the return is so meagre that they may as well not bother. This is, however, increasingly the position that Britain finds itself in. The creeping overreach of the welfare state and the rapid proliferation of needs-based policies, statutory requirements, and equality duties has created a situation in which what you contribute and the life you live are increasingly divergent, with more than half the population net recipients of direct state largesse. Sir Keir Starmer and his Labour colleagues are now setting about making this intention explicit. Their term in office started with an assault on the middle classes, hiking taxes on inheritances and capital gains, and imposing VAT on private school fees. With these early victories under their belt, attention has now turned to explicit punishment. Last week, we learnt that Civil Service internships are now to be offered to those from 'lower socio-economic backgrounds' – those, in other words, traditionally likely to have voted Labour. This week, we learnt that Labour's expansion of the Equality Act could see middle-class students shut out of good schools. It is a policy that sits particularly poorly alongside the crackdown on home-schooling, and the evisceration of private education: you will take what the state deems fit to provide you, and it will make its judgment based on its attempt to provide complete equality of outcome. Meanwhile, the funding for these needs-based allocations continues to be drawn from the shrinking segment of the population engaged in useful labour outside of the public sector. With the welfare bill continuing to rise and the Government unwilling to cut it, barring a very sudden change of heart further tax rises this autumn are now an inevitability. They may also prove counterproductive. In the long run, it is exceedingly difficult to fund a system through taxation of market activity without providing room for aspiration. By flattening outcomes – punishing the hard-working and rewarding the indolent – Labour risks undermining the tax base it relies on. The slow trickle of high earners out of Britain, and the growing numbers of residents who appear more interested in the workings of the welfare state than in working themselves, are warning signs. Should Labour persist in its war on wealth, victory could come at a steep price.
The National
an hour ago
- The National
Labour's eviction scandal beggars belief
Ali is the landlord of what sounds like rather a swank gaff in east London, near the Olympic Park. She kicked the tenants out of the four-bedroom townhouse before re-listing the property with a tidy rent increase of £700 a month, taking it to a cool £48,000 per annum. The Labour MP for Bethnal Green said that she had tried to sell the property but was unable to find a buyer so put it back on the rental market around three months later. She must have rotten luck. Fortunately, all this happened before Labour's Renters' Rights Bill has become law, so it was allowed. Under the legislation, it will be illegal to evict tenants to sell the property only to relist it before six months have passed. That's jaw-dropping enough but the story doesn't end there. (Image: UK Parliament) The firm that Ali (above) hires to manage the property attempted to charge the tenants £2000 for the house to be repainted and £395 for professional cleaning. That is not allowed and under English laws, hasn't been since 2019. If a Labour MP is to be a landlord – and it tells you a lot about a party of supposed socialists who see no contradiction there – then surely they must be the most unimpeachably squeaky-clean landlords that ever extracted rent on God's green Earth. READ MORE: SNP demand recall of Westminster to sanction Benjamin Netanyahu It was only after the tenants told the agency they knew Ali was a Labour MP that the fees were dropped. Good on the tenant who exposed this tale of literally staggering hypocrisy by speaking with the i newspaper. This wasn't Ali's first spell of misfortune during her brief, disastrous spell in government. Late last year, she was forced to give up her ministerial responsibilities for building safety after she had attended a conference sponsored by a firm implicated in the Grenfell Tower disaster. (Image: Lucy North/PA Wire) Ali has basically quit twice. But neither time has she apologised. When she tendered her resignation to the Prime Minister on Thursday evening, she went down insisting she had followed all the rules – more than could be said for her agent – but that she felt the stench of scandal following her around had become a 'distraction'. The time before, she said through gritted teeth that 'perception matters' when she relinquished her building safety responsibilities. Speaking with a source on Friday about an unrelated story about dodgy Labour antics, they told me that, despite popular perception, Labour were actually worse than the Tories for sleaze scandals. Tot it up and you start to get his point: corruption minister felled by corruption allegations, homelessness minister bagged for evicting tenants, a transport secretary who committed fraud while the head honchos are showered in enough freebies to keep you in Christmas presents for the rest of your life. Are we still waiting on that 'Change'?
