UK economy defies experts’ predictions

Once again, the ‘experts’ got it wrong.

This time, it’s economists gazing into their crystal balls, predicting economic growth for the British economy.

Guido Fawkes looked back one year to a survey of 100 economists that the Financial Times published in January 2021, the summary of which read:

Economists expect the UK economic recovery in 2021 to be slower than in peer countries, because of a lower starting point, a larger services sector, low business investment and the impact of Brexit.

Never miss a chance to blame everything on Brexit.

Guido says (emphases in the original):

Scrolling through the survey made for miserable reading. Unemployment, bankruptcies and the horrors of Brexit were all supposed to thwart our recovery…

Ninety-seven out of the 100 economists surveyed arrived at the following conclusion:

expect the size of the economy not to return to pre-pandemic levels until the third quarter of 2022.

In reality, 2021 saw a return to pre-pandemic levels of economic health:

New data from the ONS shows the UK economy is now back at pre-pandemic levels, with GDP growth at 0.9% between October and November – 0.7% larger than in February 2020, just before Covid hit. Obviously good news… although not quite the news we were all told to expect…

Instead, growth is now higher than pre-Covid, and unemployment is estimated at 4.2% – even after the end of furlough in September. Congratulations go to Erik Britton, Patrick Minford, and Tej Parikh, who were the only economists from the FT survey to actually get it right…

This is an excellent result, indeed. Let us hope that 2022’s results will be equally as buoyant.