Tag Archives: gdp

What is the economy for? Liberalism already knows the answer

What is the economy for?

It’s a simple question. But how we answer it underpins everything else in politics.

We created the economy to serve us – to make life easier, safer, better. It is a human system, designed to help people thrive.

But somewhere along the way, that relationship has become inverted. Too often, it feels as though people and communities are expected to bend themselves around the demands of the economy, rather than the other way round.

For decades, we have treated GDP growth as the ultimate measure of success. If the number goes up, we assume things are getting better. But most people instinctively know that isn’t the full story.

GDP can rise while people feel less secure, less connected, and less hopeful. It can rise while our rivers are polluted, our soils depleted, and our public services stretched. It can rise while inequality widens and communities fracture.

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16 October 2025 – today’s press releases

  • Lib Dems say China witness statements raise “more questions” than they answer and call for statutory inquiry
  • Hospices: Govt must reverse NI hike to deliver real change
  • GDP growth: Govt must kickstart growth and “quit slowcoach approach”
  • Lib Dems: Summon US ambassador over secretive meetings with Farage on rolling back women’s rights in UK
  • If China is a “daily threat” then “insane” not to cancel super-embassy, say Lib Dems
  • Chinese embassy plan must be “put out of its misery”

Lib Dems say China witness statements raise “more questions” than they answer and call for statutory inquiry

Responding to the Government publishing evidence regarding the collapsed China spy case, Liberal Democrat Foreign Affairs Spokesperson, Calum Miller MP, said:

These witness statements are only part of the puzzle and raise yet more unanswered questions.

Did emphasising the government’s desire for a positive relationship with China effectively cause this trial to collapse? What evidence was the CPS requesting which the government failed to provide?

And who was aware of these statements and the evidence being asked for both among ministers and in Number 10?

We clearly need a statutory public inquiry to get to the bottom of this whole fiasco.

Hospices: Govt must reverse NI hike to deliver real change

Commenting on the Government’s announcement on hospice funding, Liberal Democrat Care and Carers spokesperson Alison Bennett MP said:

While this announcement goes some way to help children’s hospices, it entirely ignores the profound issues in funding adult hospices. The Government must go much further to deliver the real change hospices are crying out for.

For starters, to have any chance of tackling this ticking time bomb, the Government must reverse their cruel National Insurance hike that cost hospices £34 million last year, and make sure funding keeps pace with local need.

For too long, the vital role played by hospices in our health and care system has been overlooked. The Liberal Democrats are campaigning to save the nation’s hospices. Everybody should have access to the very best palliative care, and to dignity at the end of life. This will never happen while government ministers are burying their heads in the sand.

GDP growth: Govt must kickstart growth and “quit slowcoach approach”

Responding to the news that GDP only grew by 0.1% in August, Daisy Cooper, Liberal Democrat Treasury Spokesperson, said:

Today’s figures show the economy climbing slower than a sloth under a government simply not doing enough to kickstart growth.

The Chancellor must quit her slowcoach approach to the economy and finally drop her damaging national insurance hike, which has stifled business and hit high streets up and down the country.

The Government must take today’s news as a wakeup call and put an ambitious growth plan front and centre of their Budget later this Autumn – starting with a bespoke new UK-EU customs union which would unleash the potential of British exporters to trade more easily with our European neighbours.

Lib Dems: Summon US ambassador over secretive meetings with Farage on rolling back women’s rights in UK

The Liberal Democrats have called on the Government to summon the US Ambassador to explain why the US embassy in London held secretive talks with Nigel Farage on rolling back women’s rights and online safety laws in the UK.

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What we need is not constant ‘growth’ or complete ‘degrowth’ but intelligent economic development

In his recent article, John Hills offers some helpful reflections about the political future of the LibDems. As John writes: ‘It is necessary to go beyond individual policies and good ideas, to find our narrative; not just of what we believe, but more tangibly, what we stand for.’ I couldn’t agree more. The most intriguing aspect of John’s piece is his suggestion that while we have recently focused on disillusioned Conservatives, we would be wise to reach out to other political tribes, particularly Green-facing voters. John is right to say that LibDems continue to tell a good story about the environment (see our recent campaigning on the state of the UK’s rivers). He is also right that we should focus on what is distinctive in our offering; a kind of pivot and diverge strategy. But we have to be careful concerning the divergence aspect of the equation.

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13 September 2023 – today’s press releases

  • GDP stats: Sunak has failed to get a grip on the economy
  • Nutrient Neutrality: Lib Dems to vote against removing water pollution rules
  • PMQs: Davey raises Sunak’s failure on cancer as 22,000 people wait more than 4 months for treatment
  • Watchdog failing to audit water companies – Lib Dems call for inquiry
  • Levelling Up Bill: Government overruled for nutrient neutrality laws

GDP stats: Sunak has failed to get a grip on the economy

Responding to latest GDP stats which show the UK economy shrank by 0.5% in July 2023, Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesperson Sarah Olney MP said:

The Conservative government’s mismanagement of the economy is a burden on any chance of growth.

Rishi Sunak has utterly failed to get a grip on the cost of living crisis as mortgage costs continue to spiral and the price of a weekly shop goes through the roof.

Mortgage arrears are now at their highest since 2016 and families are wondering if they will once again be forced to choose between heating and eating this winter.

This out of touch Conservative government has completely failed on the economy.

Nutrient Neutrality: Lib Dems to vote against removing water pollution rules

Today in the House of Lords, the Liberal Democrats are voting against the Secretary of Housing Michael Gove’s plan to remove EU anti-water pollution laws- so called ‘nutrient neutrality’ rules in order to build more houses. This in turn could lead to more pollution in our already filthy rivers.

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Economic crisis: problems and remedies

There’s an economic crisis underway. Several policy motions at Lib Dem Autumn Conference make reference to economic problems. The government’s current industrial strategy (‘Plan for Growth’) runs to 112 pages and reads more like an argument against reform rather than for it; perhaps fearful of being accused by the tabloids of ‘talking down Brexit Britain’ .

UK economic problems are deep-rooted; some even hundreds of years old. Political parties of course share the blame but that’s only a small part of the story. Perceptions of problems and remedies have changed over the many decades, independent of political oscillations. But we will need clarity and deep thinking beyond political partisanship to extricate ourselves.

The symptoms are all around us. Disposable income is collapsing as mortgage payments, rents, energy, food prices, and now taxes, are all rising. Credit card debt is accelerating. Investment is in serious decline; since 2019 British businesses have invested less, as a percentage of GDP, than any other major economy. The Bank of England forecasts that business investment will further fall by around 2 per cent in 2024. By most measures GDP performance is the worst in the G7. UK debt sustainability is worsening. Debt service is set to exceed total NHS spending within three years. Tax revenues are just a third of GDP, and only half the population pay income tax.

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Is GDP almost everything?

In 1968, Bobby Kennedy made a much-celebrated speech in which he denigrated Gross National Product (GNP, now usually replaced by Gross Domestic Product, GDP) as a measure of America’s well-being. He said:

… counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them … Yet does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials … it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile …

Financial Times columnist Janan Ganesh voices his disdain for this view in a recent article:

Yes – GDP is almost everything: The recession should kill off the romantic idea that growth is a mixed blessing.

He says, rightly, that wealthy countries tend to do better on indicators such as homicide rates than poor countries. Yes, poor countries do badly on a range of social indicators. But Kennedy was talking only about America. The richer we are, the less an increase in wealth boosts our well-being.

Ganesh also says:

The looming recession will be painful. But it will also drive a certain kind of post-materialist humbug from polite discourse. Growth will be harder to dismiss as a bean counter’s tawdry obsession when there is so little of the stuff to go round.

Yes, growth will be missed if it’s replaced by recession – growth is good for the feel-good factor and not everyone is post-materialist.

Recession would hit poor people in the rich world hard but we don’t need growth to eliminate most rich-world poverty. We just need to be fairer and more generous to people whose earning power is low.

Ganesh doesn’t mention the costs of growth – such as the demise of the stable physical climate in which our civilisations have evolved. We seem to be getting into a zone where we lose our ability to limit global warming and where our physical environment deteriorates eventually to where the present human population can no longer be supported. The change may be so rapid that, for one or more generations, perhaps in most of the world, human life will be nasty, brutish and short. Whatever the scale of the resulting fall in GDP, the decline in human well-being would be catastrophic.

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GDP above pre-crash level; strongest growth in G7

Today’s figures from the Office for National Statistics show growth of 0.8% in the second quarter of 2014, bringing UK GDP above the level it was before the 2008 crash.

With GDP 3.1% higher than a year earlier, the UK has the fastest growing economy in the G7.

Cheif Secretary to the Treasury, Danny Alexander comments

Today we are passing a major milestone on the long road back to full recovery. There is still a long way to go but Britain has recovered the economic ground lost under Labour and is forging ahead.

The main reason that we stepped forward to

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The economy is growing again. But that’s no reason to think the voters will be grateful.

Economy-in-the-UKWhat a difference 3 months makes.

As late as 24th April, the fear was the UK economy might be slipping into a ‘triple dip’ recession. That was a bullet dodged. Then a month ago, on 27 June, we discovered the ‘double dip’ recession never actually happened after all. That was a bullet extracted.

Today, the Office of National Statistics has announced GDP growth increased by 0.6% in the second quarter of 2013. The smile of relief has become something more genuine.

No-one should get too carried away. The …

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Relief as 0.3% GDP growth shows economy flat-lining not shrinking. Has the Coalition’s mid-term slump bottomed out?

Reading too much into quarterly GDP figures is, of course, a mug’s game. They’re noticed mainly by avid Westminster-watchers and frequently revised both up and down.

None of that means they don’t matter, though. They frame the way politics is reported in the here and now. And that can affect what happens in the future. They can create momentum, or they can stop it dead.

A triple-dip recession, against market expectations of a modest 0.1% increase in GDP, would’ve been a severe blow to the Coalition’s message that, surely but slowly, the medicine’s working. As it is, the actual 0.3% …

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4 graphs on Thatcher’s legacy: a richer but more unequal nation.

A generation on, the Thatcher legacy continues to provoke and divide. One of the questions it poses for liberals is one this government is still wrestling with: does inequality matter if everyone’s getting richer?

Margaret Thatcher’s answer was that it did not — as she famously illustrated in one of her last Commons performances in response to a question from Simon Hughes:

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As economy shrinks again, Oakeshott calls for Osborne to be moved to make way for “our A team at the treasury”

Here’s how The Guardian reports the call by Lord (Matthew) Oakeshott for George Osborne to be moved from Number 11 in the wake of today’s fresh dire news on the economy:

A senior Liberal Democrat peer has called on George Osborne to be sacked as the chancellor continued to insist the government was on the right economic path, despite “disappointing” official

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Michael Moore MP’s Westminster Notes

Liberal Democrat Secretary of State for Scotland writes a regular column for newspapers in his constituency. Here’s this week’s edition.

Scotland Bill

 Last week the Scotland Bill completed its passage through the House of Commons and received Royal Assent today (1st May). As a Liberal Democrat I have always supported devolution and Home Rule and as Secretary of State for Scotland I am proud to have piloted this Bill through Westminster to deepen devolution even further. Despite their initial opposition, I am pleased that the SNP have also come round to supporting the Bill which will bring about the biggest ever transfer …

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