April 27, 2009
THE latest official figures from the Office for National Statistics show the recession is even worse than had been feared. They also show up the absurdity of the predictions for a quick recovery made by Alistair Darling in last week?s Budget.
The UK economy shrank 1.9% in the first three months of 2009, according to official ONS gross domestic product (GDP) data. This figure was much worse than the expected level of about 1.5% and followed a 1.6% shrinkage in the previous three-month period. This makes the worst six-month decline in GDP since the ONS began publishing the figures. GDP measures the value of all the goods and services produced by a country, i.e. basically the size of its economy.
GDP has now shrunk for three quarterly periods in a row, and the shrinkage is getting worse. Most ominously, it is especially hitting the real economy, manufacturing, which actually makes things and should be, as it once was, the bedrock of the British economy. New Labour and the Tories, on the other hand, see ?financial services?, the legalised fraud and three-card-tricks operated by their City slicker backers, as the foundation of the economy.
Manufacturing shrank by 6.2% in the first three months of this year, having decreased by 4.9% in the previous quarter. ?The last six months has seen the sharpest fall [in GDP] on record and the manufacturing number? is a record,? Jon Beadle from the Office for National Statistics told the BBC: ?We?ve not seen a fall that size in the history of our numbers since the Second World War.?
In fact the country hasn?t been this far in debt since then either. And in the Budget Chancellor Darling announced that he plans to run Britain deeper into the red. Borrowing more money than was borrowed by Governments to pay for the First and Second World Wars and the Napoleonic Wars all added together! A vast bill which will hit all of us hard in a huge tax hike, whoever wins the next election.
These latest figures make the predictions clearly dreamed up out of thin air by the Chancellor as he desperately whistled in the dark in his Budget speech look ever more ridiculous.
Darling predicted (or hoped!) that GDP would only shrink by 3.5% over the whole of 2009. Then the recession would end and growth would resume just in time for the General Election Labour must call by summer next year.
After these dire official figures serious predictions are being revised even further downwards. The International Monetary Fund predicts British GDP will fall by at least 4.1% in 2009. Even that is thought to be too optimistic now. Benjamin Williamson at the Centre for Economic and Business Research told the BBC today that: ?Our latest forecast is for a 4.5% contraction this year, making 2009 the steepest single year contraction in economic activity since the
5.1% fall in 1931.?1931 was at the height of the Great Slump, which is almost certainly where we?re actually headed as global finance Capitalism plumbs the depths of its latest ? but if it survives it certainly not its last or worst ? crisis.
A crisis that only hurts us because we let it. Because Labour, Tory and Lib-Dems insist on roping us to the lead weight of the failing global market system so it can drag us, and our jobs, homes, livelihoods and families, with it into the abyss.
The British National Party is the only political party that can cut us free from globalisation to allow Britain to prosper on its own.
The answer to this worsening crisis isn?t more public borrowing and more bank bailouts now, with more and higher taxes and fewer and worse public services tomorrow.
The answer is to break with the global finance/market system and to build a self-sufficient economy for ourselves, protected by tariff walls from the storm raging outside.
?By ourselves alone? must be our watchword if we are to survive the gathering global darkness.
Steve Johnson writes for the British National Party?s monthly newspaper Freedom.