The economy is growing!

Coffee House Shots

The Spectator

News, Politics, Government, Daily News

4.4 • 2.1K Ratings

🗓️ 11 April 2025

⏱️ 11 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Finally, some good news for your Friday: the economy is growing! Just when everyone seems to be revising down expectations of growth, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) estimates that GDP grew by 0.5 per cent in February. It also revised January’s figures upwards to give growth for the last quarter of 0.6 per cent, and annual growth of 1.4 per cent. It looks – for now – that the Reeves recession has been put on hold and that Labour's growth agenda could be working.

That said, Labour cannot afford to celebrate just yet. There is reason to believe the figures could be overstated, and there are some trust issues with the ONS – the government last week announced a review of its ‘performance and culture’. These figures also do not take into account the tumult caused by Trump's tariffs. So what can we read into them? Will Trump undo Labour's progress?

Lucy Dunn speaks to Michael Simmons and Katy Balls.

Produced by Oscar Edmondson.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This episode of Coffee House Shots is sponsored by Alliance Witten Investment Trust. From the OPEC
0:06.0	Oil Crisis of the 1970s, the financial crash in 2008, to the COVID epidemic and Liz Truss's
0:13.1	doomed premiership. There has been no shortage of economic crises over the last 58 years. And yet,
0:19.6	throughout that time, every single year, without fail,
0:22.8	we've paid out an increased dividend to our shareholders. In fact, Alliance Witten's history
0:28.3	dates all the way back to 1888. And today, we manage around £5 billion in assets.
0:35.5	If you're looking for a less stressful way to invest in stocks and shares,
0:39.2	learn more about Alliance Whitten and find your comfort zone.
0:46.3	Hello and welcome to Coffee House Shots. I'm Lucy Dunn and today I'm joined by Katie Bowles
0:50.3	and Michael Simmons. This morning the Office of National Statistics estimated that GDP had
0:55.1	grown by 0.5% in February, suggesting that Rachel Reeves has managed to grow the economy.
1:00.0	Michael, is this development unexpected? Yeah, this is absolutely unexpected. You know, we've had all
1:05.0	this talk that we could be heading towards our recession. And to put it into context, a 0.5% growth within a single
1:14.4	month is like huge. Over a year, that works out at like 6%. So if this growth is real and sustained,
1:21.2	then we'd be back to growth, not just that we've seen in sort of the pre-COVID times,
1:26.7	but that'd be growth that we kind of saw up to the financial crash.
1:30.1	So that happened.
1:30.9	You know, Britain really would be going gangbusters.
1:34.6	But there's some reasons to believe that these figures might be slightly overstated.
1:40.2	So this is the monthly GDP figure for February.
1:43.3	And there's quite often a lot of noise in that data.
1:45.8	There's kind of trust issues with the Office for National Statistics as well. The government
	...

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