Bad economic news should be no surprise to anyone but the extent of the drop in UK Gross Domestic Product for the last year, coming in lower by just short of 10%, was just that. Lockdown periods causing havoc in the hospitality, travel and associated services industries, are the main cause and logically, when UK PLC is fully vaccinated and open for business again, this figure should rebound as quickly as it fell away. By how much and how soon, remains to be seen.

We are not alone in this situation but the manner in which UK Gross Domestic Product is calculated, according to the Chancellor this week, gives it the appearance of being somewhat worse than comparable major economies but not when the data is adjusted using similar formulae to those countries. Labour just sees the Government Covid economic performance as stand out poor, regardless of the accounting methods used.

A little good news came with the ONS economic stats.  

Q4 2020 growth was widely predicted to be a negative figure and tip us into a double dip recession, but the period actually produced a net growth of !%, despite a substantial period of lockdown within the quarter.