Repeat after me: “There is no economic growth!”

Friday-weekend blog

In my last two blogs, I tried to highlight the economic catastrophe which is facing the European car industry, especially in Britain. For some reason, our economically-illiterate politicians seem blissfully unaware of the damage this is doing to the British economy and how this is devastating skilled, well-paid British jobs. Oh, maybe it’s because our rulers are economically-illiterate? Or maybe it’s because they believe cars are destroying the planet and that, in our future glorious 10-minute cities where we plebs will be incarcerated and forbidden from leaving, nobody, except the ruling elites, should have a car? Or maybe it’s because the elites have their well-paid, well-pensioned jobs for life and so couldn’t give toss about what happens to ordinary people?

Today, I’d like to go further by highlighting the collapse of UK manufacturing.

Here’s a chart of UK manufacturing as a percent of GDP:

And here’s a chart of the decline in the number of people employed in UK manufacturing:

And here’s a chart of China’s share of world manufacturing:

Surely even a politician or a mainstream media journalist can see what is happening?

There is no economic growth!

I’m not a brilliant economist like Britain’s greatest ever female Chancellor who famously worked in customer services for some bank or other up in Leeds. But I can do some simple arithmetic.

In the financial year 2025/6 Britain’s GDP was about £3.03 trillion. Britain’s greatest ever Prime Minister – Keir Starmer – and his economic genius Chancellor (or should that just be ‘Chancer’?) – Ms Reeves – claimed that with economic growth of about 1.3%, the UK was the ‘fastest growing economy in the G7’ or some nonsense like that. But during the financial year 2025/6 Britain borrowed and spaffed on massive public sector pay rises, millions of can’t-be-bothered-to-work skivers and an invading army of illegal immigrants a ‘mere’ £129 billion. This was equivalent to 4.2% of GDP.

Using my little pocket calculator (or even my fingers), I can work out that this means that, if Britain had not borrowed and spaffed 4.2% of GDP, then our real ‘growth’ would actually be minus 2.9% (4.2-1.3=2.9). This is NOT growth. This is a 2.9% fall in GDP.

Yet our politicians somehow believe (or claim to believe?) the British economy is growing.

God help us! We are governed by liars or idiots or lying idiots!

Oh, and here’s an AI video I had produced about Britain’s greatest ever female Chancellor:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Zb1my2Sq5uxlk_wtwivxmBE0tQYN92TH/view?usp=sharing