It was announced on Thursday that the U.K. entered recession during the latter half of 2023, using the definition of two consecutive quarters of negative growth. According to the ONS, GDP fell 0.1% from July to September and then fell another 0.3% from October to December. Labour has predictably dubbed this “Rishi’s recession”.
More concerning than the headline GDP figures, though, are the data on real GDP per capita – which is after all what we care about. They show that British living standards, adjusted for inflation, have fallen for five out of the last six quarters. In other words, they haven’t grown since the first quarter of 2022. There hasn’t been a run of negative growth this bad since the Great Recession of 2008.
What’s more, the level of GDP per capita was higher in the fourth quarter of 2017. Which means that Britons are worse off than they were six years ago. I don’t need to remind you that the ‘Conservative’ Party has been in power throughout this period.
Back in October of 2022, I wrote a piece for the Daily Sceptic titled ‘The Tories Should Call a General Election’. My argument was simple: things are going to get worse before they get better, so the Tories ought to cut their losses. Quoting myself:
The best strategy for the Tories is to call a General Election, pass the baton to Labour, and then blame the country’s economic problems on them. Lose the battle to win the war, so to speak… An election now would be a bloodbath, but if the Tories hold off another two years they could be out of power for a generation.
It looks like I was right. The Tories are no better off in the polls than when I wrote that piece but the economy has deteriorated further. What’s more, the Reform Party is now nipping at their heels, with a solid 10% in the polls. So rather than just a terrible result in the next General Election, the Tories may be facing their worst result in history!
A seat projection published on February 14th predicts that they’ll be left with just 80 seats in the House of Commons – substantially fewer than the 156 they won in their disastrous 1906 defeat. Meanwhile, Labour will enjoy a massive majority of 256 – larger than the one Tony Blair received at the historic 1997 election.
In another piece for the Daily Sceptic, this one written in November of 2022, I identified three causes of the then-imminent recession, which I dubbed Britain’s “liberal technocratic recession”. The first was lockdown, during which supply chains broke down and the Government paid people not to work. The second was the Europe-wide decision to let oil refineries shut down without building any new ones. The third was the self-harming sanctions against Russia, which led to Europe splurging €1 trillion on gas.
When it comes to the decline in living standards, a fourth cause may be added: mass immigration. Since the middle of 2021, Britain has seen the highest levels of immigration in its history, with the net figure running at 745,000 in the year ending December 2022. This means the total population is now larger and average living standards correspondingly lower.
Lockdown, the energy crisis, mass immigration – these were all policy choices by the party in power. So it’s hardly surprising the public want a change (not that Labour will be any better). The writing was on the wall by October of 2022 and the Tories should have read it.
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Something about the normalisation of these AI-generated images makes me nervous. We don’t need them as headline banners on Daily Sceptic. Let’s focus on the real, please.
Putin killed Navalny eventually then. Very sad to hear this.
P.S I like the picture above. Better than policemen in rainbow unitards. It’s eerie, atmospheric and has scary movie vibes about it.
”Russian Opposition leader Alexei Navalny has DIED in prison.
The 47 year old, who was reportedly subjected to torture whilst being imprisoned, 40 miles north of the Arctic Circle, was arguably Putin’s biggest critic.
In a video appearance last month he appeared gaunt and frail, with his head shaved.
The Russian prison where he died has claimed he “felt unwell after a walk and almost immediately lost consciousness”.
Several media outlets have been speculating that his death could well be an ‘assassination’ and a move by Putin to silence his main opposition once and for all.
In 2020, Nalavny fell into a coma with suspected novichok poisoning- carried out by Russias FSB.
His death comes as Putin is running his re-election campaign in a month to remain President.”
https://twitter.com/OliLondonTV/status/1758478532823461932
This is terrible news for the Russian people. Tall, blond, courageous, Ethnic Russian Nalavny, with his wonderful sense of humour and his tall, blond Russian wife and family, represented everything that Tiny Tatar Putin hates.
The whole Russian-Ukrainian Fake War was set up by Tiny Tatar Putin & his secret ally Tiny Zionist Zelensky with one objective: to kill off as many Ethnic Russians and Ethnic Ukrainian men as possible. Putin could easily have crushed Ukraine at once, but that was never the purpose of the little genocidal ruse cooked up between the two leaders, whose aim is to drag it out as long as possible, and kill as many Ethnic European men as possible. Now Tiny Tatar Putin is conscripting even 70-year-old Russians to be sent to their deaths, so the state doesn’t have to pay their pensions.
As others have said, Nalavny should have directed opposition from abroad, instead of going back to Russia and certain imprisonment by the Fiend Putin, who reportedly enjoyed watching videos of Nalavny being beaten, starved and tortured in prison. I hope Brazilian Patriot Jair Bolsonaro, the true President of Brazil, will not suffer a similar fate, after Evil Communist Lula’s previous attempts to assassinate him.
“Tiny Tatar”
I certainly agree regarding Bolsonaro.
I wonder where Daily Sceptic found 15 people to tick in defence of almost certain murder of the principal opposition leader.
Anybody who thinks the Nalvany affair is about a simple principled opposition leader doesn’t belong on DS. Nothing is that simple when you see daily to what lengths the West is willing to go to weaken Putin and Russia.
WHAT?????
Anyone who disagrees with you “doesn’t belong on DS”?????
Ever heard of FREEDOM OF SPEECH and the
FREE SPEECH UNION? Who the blazes do you think you are?
I would say that with an attitude like yours it’s you who doesn’t belong on DS. Normal, rational people have the ability to tolerate others with a different viewpoint without inferring they should sling their hook. Apparently that description doesn’t apply to you!
I am sorry you took my comment personally, it was meant figuratively. DS is normally a site where people are skeptical of the official narrative. That is all. I welcome all comments and opinions and do not wish to bar anybody.
Are MP’s living standards affected or will they continue to award themselves pay increases and use expenses to try and maintain their lifestyle, changing legislation if needs be to be benefit themselves?
Then there’s helping out their friends to make sure they also do well and perhaps provide some work if being an MP doesn’t work out.
I can’t imagine Rishi Sunak is too concerned about living standards except as a negative headline.
Standard of living is directly tied to price and availability of energy. NET ZERO puts up the price and makes energy less available. ——Net Zero is therefore the opposite of prosperity and it lowers standard of living. —–It has been obvious for a very long time that our own politicians pander to the Marxist ideology of the UN and WEF. who freely admit that the lifestyles of the affluent middle classes in western society are “unsustainable”. —-They will never tell you that their plan is to remove prosperity because let’s face it, who is ever going to vote for that, so they give you weasel words instead, like “fairness, climate justice, living wage for all (even those who choose not to work), gender and racial equality, and every other Marxist goal all packed as “Sustainable Development”
Yes but I definitely think that a white man masquerading as a woman whilst trying to look official talking about how climate change is racist will likely change your mind;
https://twitter.com/OliLondonTV/status/1758487108073685344
Whilst buying my last two houses I always sort the advice a trans admiral to avoid the old poverty/climate trap! Who doesn’t?
Makes me think of Aristotle’s claim that democracy would be a futile way of government because the multitude would sooner or later always fall for a demagogue.
And wasn’t it Plato who said true democracy only works in a small, ethnically homogenous society?
Exactly.
Unfortunately Noah Carl appears to still believe in our electoral system when the reality is that it is a complete sham. Fishy was moved in to place in order to bring about precisely the collapse in living standards that are discussed in this article. It does not require the brightest brains to explain that massive hikes in fuel prices are going to impoverish the country. This means of course that even foppish Fishy knows what he is doing and therefore the conclusion must be that he is acting deliberately. In fact he is simply carrying out orders. So when Noah warns that matters will get worse under Labour he is absolutely correct but for the wrong reasons because Kneel has all but admitted he is a WEF stooge.
The Davos Deviants are wholly committed to the destruction of this country and they have people in place to ensure this happens – Fishy and Chunt, Kneel guided by Bliar and Davey who is so away with the faeries he can be safely left alone as a vaguely supporting actor and anyway he is so far away from power that hell really will freeze over before he gets sight of any keys to Downing St.
The degree of naivety displayed by some DS writers is at times awe inspiring.
Yep you got it in one. ——-I like the DS because we can all say what we are thinking pretty much unlike eg on Mailonline and other places, but I am mystified how you received 3 red thumbs down ——–I don’t expect everyone to agree with me but I get a lot of people doing a red thumbs down but they never seem to say why they disagree. They just do the thumbs down and vanish. —-What are they so scared of? ——-Hey you guys c’mon no one is going to bite your head off …Speak Freely.
varmint, I reckon I have about three regular trolls who always down vote. I couldn’t care less.
Yep. —–Often on the comments I make on climate there will be thumbs up and maybe one thumbs down. ——-I have no problem with any amount of thumbs down, but those people should say why they do the thumbs down. Or is it that they have no confidence in their argument?
It’s deliberate, they blew coal fired power stations and replaced with windmills. Who thought that would improve living standards?
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GGdprwXXMAAkYDm?format=jpg&name=small
In a very short few decades we went from Thatcher being crucified for wanting to shut down mines to the entire political class wanting to do so and being praised from the rooftops for it.
Noah Carl’s article on the lowering of British living standards reminds me that this lowering has been going on since 1952, according to two eye-opening articles.
“From a historical point of view the idea that ‘diversity built Britain’, the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution, is bizarre. Until 1952 Britain was the richest country in Europe, after which we massively fell behind our continental rivals – so if diversity did ‘build’ the country, it didn’t do a great job.”
—from “The Windrush Myth” by Ed West
The Windrush myth | The Spectator
“1952 was the start of Elizabeth II’s reign. The Windrush Illegal Human Trafficking Operation was in 1948. The Commonwealth was created in 1949. From the original 8 members, it now has 56, mostly Third World countries receiving foreign aid from UK taxpayers.” [Bizarrely, former French African colonies Gabon & Togo were allowed to join the Commonwealth in 2022, and more Francophone African countries are expected to join later, all then demanding cash from UK Taxpayers]
—See “Elizabeth II’s Devotion to the Commonwealth” by Robert Hardman here:
Elizabeth II’s devotion to the Commonwealth | The Spectator
I think he’s placing that seriously too late. Until the first world war, Britain was the foremost money lender on the planet and everybody else was indebted to it, especially the mostly rural backwater country called USA. Then came Lloyd George’s mad rush to destroy Germany and Austria-Hungary (and Russia and Turkey in the process) at any cost which turned the USA, where plenty of workers were available as the country wasn’t actively participating in the war before 1917/18, into a huge ammunitions factory to enable Britain and France to buy the absolutely insane numbers of artillery shells spent during the futile mass slaughter & destruction happenings on the western front. And this, they did with money borrowed from American bankers, leading to a reverse of the original situation.
“British Living Standards Are Going Down”
Britain is going down! fast
It is not the Conservatives who should blame themselves. It is the British people who should blame the political class.
So who do I vote for?
My political leaning is slightly right of centre, and I am a firm believer of personal freedom and self determination.
The Conservative Party has been appalling, and Labour will likely be worse (if that is possible).
Unless there is some unison of disgruntled voters like me, Labour will be in power.
Is it possible to unite for change?
After the last 14 years, and particularly the last 4, you’d think the Not-a-Conservative-Party had deliberately set out to self-destruct.
Labour will take up the baton and run with it. ——–If there were an Impoverishment Olympics the UK would be well featured on the winners podium