Wages rise, GDP falls, and the Tories are looking lost at sea

THE difficulty in figuring out if Britain's economic  performance is sluggish or worse depends on whether we are in search of clouds or inspired by silver linings.

- Anne McElvoy

For Rishi Sunak, returning to the domestic fray from the G20 in India, framing the case that he has been the great stabiliser of national performance has been the silvery part. Yet it is one that has grown harder to discern as borrowers and businesses feel the pain of surging interest rates. Sunak's woes are exacerbated by strikes and a lacklustre summer in construction, retail and elsewhere. There is little bounce to speak of. The economy is limping to recovery - but the pace is grindingly slow.

Other recent data offers the Government some respite and a brief told-you-so moment. The Office for National Statistics has overhauled its downbeat view of the pandemic period, now that it turns out the UK did not do anywhere near as badly as the doomier analysis first reckoned. It also fitted a set of views according to which Brexit started to destroy the economy and Liz Truss finished off the rest. Really, the longer story of decline precedes these factors, even if they sharpened the impacts.

So Britain is nowhere near being a top performer in the Covid prosperity recovery stakes (those laurels go to the US, Canada and Japan and (in Europe) France and Italy. Germany and the UK are neck and neck in the contest to have the worst time of it.