Rishi's recession: Labour blast as PM fails on pledge

Experts divided at Britain’s first proper slump since the financial crisis of 2008

- Jonathan Prynn and Nicholas Cecil

THE economy slumped into recession last year dealing a hammer blow to Rishi Sunak’s growth pledge, official figures showed today.

The Office for National Statistics said GDP fell by a worse than expected 0.3 per cent in the last three months of 2023. That followed a 0.1 per cent dip in the third quarter. Economists define a recession as two consecutive quarters of negative growth. Labour and the Liberal Democrats immediately sought to tie the Prime Minister to the downturn hitting Britain, branding it “Rishi’s recession”. But Chancellor Jeremy Hunt stated: “There are signs the British economy is turning a corner.”

Shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves responded: “The Conservatives have now put our economy into reverse.” More detailed data painted a bleaker picture than the headline figures, with GDP per person falling in every quarter last year and down 0.7 per cent over 2023 as a whole.

It was the first time the UK has experienced a recession since the Covid pandemic, and excluding the exceptional circumstances of lockdowns, it was the first downturn since the financial crisis in 2008 and 2009.