Britain’s not doing as badly as gloomy forecasters tell us, says Tim Newark

Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey (Image: Dan Kitwood/Getty) As an ex-Bank of England economist now admits they printed too much money during Covid, fearing the worst, it makes you wonder just how many other gloomy forecasters are getting it wrong and damaging our economy. In June 2021, the New Statesman quoted a forecast from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) saying ‘the dual impact of Covid-19 and Brexit means the UK faces deeper economic scarring than any other country.’ It was against this gloomy picture that Tory tax hikes were justified, dragging further on our potential growth. Thanks to the admission on Friday that the ONS got it wrong, we can now see that UK GDP in 2021 was in fact 1.7 percent higher than previously calculated, making our economy O.6 percent above its pre-Covid level, not 1.2 below, meaning that Brexit Britain was no longer a global outlier but in fact, outperforming France and Germany and just behind big hitters Canada and the US. This matters because the narrative that we’ve been fed by both Remainers and lefty liberals is that both Brexit and Covid has left us teetering on the edge of recession, with a jittery market needing to be reassured by tax rises. Don’t forget it was just a year ago when Liz Truss wanted to trigger a go-go economy with tax cuts but was told by the Establishment that we couldn’t afford it and was thrown out of office as a result. Instead, it now seems her economic stimulus could have been handled by a more robust UK and could have given us higher growth, making the most of Brexit freedoms to outcompete the EU. Of course, globalist economic think tanks could never allow this, especially the IMF, and their gloomy but faulty forecasts have been a consistent drag on our economic decision-makers. We now learn that the Bank of England, not renowned either for the accuracy of its forecasts, printed too much money during the pandemic thinking our faltering economy needed it when the reverse was true. According to ex-Bank of England adviser Andy Haldane, this recklessness led to the current inflationary nightmare we are in. Undoubtedly the £450bn pumped into the economy during the pandemic triggered inflation. The failure of the Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey to realise this soon enough led to double-digit price rises, battering us all with a cost-of-living crisis. Considering this is one of his main tasks, Bailey should admit his poor judgment and resign from his £495,000-a-year job. Figures matter and faulty ones especially if they discourage more dynamic economic plans as those envisioned by Liz Truss. We could do so much better as a nation if we weren’t shackled by a succession of pessimistic, wrong-headed predictions. Such a consistent failure of major forecasters must bring to mind the other major government policy threatening our future prosperity. Net-Zero is based on a series of computer forecasts, which may or not be proved wrong in the fullness of time. Covid scientists got their data wrong, forcing lockdowns on us that were possibly not necessary. And it’s worth considering that forecasts of climate doom may equally prove to be wide of the mark or over-egged, yet it will be too late then to reverse the damage done to our economy by rapid deindustrialisation, rocketing energy bills and a general collapse in our living standards. The ONS major error revealed this week must give us all pause for thought that the brightest among us do not necessarily know best and we should really rely on some good old-fashioned common sense, only dealing with problems when they actually arise, rather than anticipating problems when they don’t exist. Catastrophising is too much the fashion now and when dodgy figures are used to back up these nightmare scenarios we all end up suffering. As the revised ONS figures show, there are many reasons to be cheerful and as a nation, we’re not doing as badly as everyone else thinks.