How Many Economists Does it Take to Wreck an Economy?

In the last few days, the BBC gushingly quoted a report from the IMF (International Monetary Fund) which upgraded the projected UK GDP growth from 1% to 1.3%. And, we were told that the UK would have one of the highest growth rates for 2026 of all the main industrialised countries.

At the same time the Daily Mail newspaper reported that the IMF had downgraded UK GDP growth for 2027. What was happening was that the BBC only reported the IMF forecast upgrade for 2026 while ‘forgetting’ to mention the downgraded forecast for 2027. In contrast, the Daily Mail ‘omitted’ to mention the IMF forecast upgrade for 2026 while it focused on the downgrade for 2027. So much for being able to trust the mainstream media.

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a short article for the Daily Sceptic suggesting that using GDP growth rates was not a valid way of comparing different countries’ economies and that the UK economy wasn’t actually growing as almost all our mainstream media journalists and economists claimed. Instead, I proposed that the UK was already in a deep recession.

I’ll briefly summarise my argument.

Let’s assume there are two countries – Country A and Country B. Both countries have a GDP of say £3 trillion. And both countries have GDP growth in 2026 of 1.3%.

In Country A that growth comes from growth in private-sector business – manufacturing and services. Moreover, because the private sector is growing in Country A, more people are being employed and so government spending on unemployment benefits is falling while taxes from a successful growing private sector are rising. So, Country A doesn’t need to borrow any money from international bond markets.

In Country B we have a Chancellor whose grasp of economics could seem as dodgy as her CV. Let’s just call her Rachel. Chancellor Rachel oversees two economy-crushing budgets. The first raises taxes by about £40 billion and the second one by another £24 billion. These huge increases in taxes cause the private sector to contract with increasing numbers of business bankruptcies and over 150,000 people losing their jobs a year. This increases government spending on unemployment benefits. Moreover, Country B spends billions on tens of thousands more illegal migrants, on an extra 260,000 NEETS (young people not in employment, education or training), on tens of thousands more people claiming they are disabled and huge increases in the number of people employed in the public sector while also giving the whole public sector an inflation-busting 6.3% pay rise. Given that the private sector in Country B is contracting, asphyxiated by Rachel’s increased taxes, how does Country B pay for the eye-watering increases in public spending? It borrows large amounts of money at usurious interest rates. This extra borrowing and extra spending results in an apparent increase of 1.3% in GDP.

It was my contention that Country A was experiencing real economic growth. But Country B created the illusion of economic growth by borrowing and wasting huge amounts of money on unproductive areas (illegal migrants, more unemployed, more fake disabled and more public-sector waste). So, I proposed that Country B was actually in a recession.

I sent the link to my article to the Sunday Times’s key economist David Smith, asking how he and many other economists could claim the UK economy was growing when the UK economy was, in my humble opinion, basically rather unpleasantly similar to Country B. I got a wonderfully rapid reply:

It is because we know something about economics and economic statistics and that you are talking economically illiterate nonsense.

Not only is the Sunday Times’s top economist the ultimate professional, but he is also clearly extremely polite to the Sunday Times’s readers who pay his possibly generous salary.

This got me wondering how many economists there were in Britain most of whom seemed to disagree with my obviously amateurish assessment of Britain’s economy. The only figures the good Professor Google could find were:

UK Government: the Government Economic Service (GES) employs more than 3,500 to 3,700+ economists across over 70 Government departments and civil service bodies, making it the single largest public employer of economists in the country.

If we assume that the average annual cost to us taxpayers of each of these public-sector economists is say £85,000 a year including salary, national insurance, pensions and office expenses, then these economists are costing us around £300 million a year. Given the dire state of the British economy, one might be forgiven for wondering what these 3,500 to 3,700-plus public-sector economists do all day.

Moreover, there would also inevitably be many thousands more economists working in financial services and throughout the private sector.

I don’t know how many of Britain’s many economists have ever had a proper job where they have employed people and created wealth for our country. I have been fortunate to have worked in around 80 public and private sector organisations in 15 countries in five languages. But my Daily Sceptic article was, in the opinion of a highly-respected economist, clearly “economically illiterate nonsense”.

There are a few economists who do appear to realise that, with its debt at around 100% of GDP and its debt repayments significantly increasing, the UK is going rapidly bankrupt. But most ‘economists’ seem to believe that the UK economy is growing.

We saw this phenomenon again on this morning. The economics presenter on BBC Breakfast excitedly announced that the UK economy supposedly grew by 0.1% in August. This ‘expert’ claimed this meant more jobs, more people employed and more wealth being created.

Sky News joined in the chorus of adulation with: “Surprise GDP growth as UK economy stronger than first thought.” Then there was, of course, the Labour-loving Guardian: “UK economy unexpectedly grows 0.1% despite fall in consumer spending.”

But, hold on a minute. The UK’s annual GDP for 2026 is expected to come in at £2.8 trillion. Let’s do some ‘really complex’ mathematics and divide that £2.8 trillion by 12 to give the average monthly GDP. The result is about £233 billion. The UK economy supposedly grew by 0.1% in August 2026. So (using some more mathematics that is clearly far beyond the comprehension of BBC and Guardian economics experts) – that gives us growth of £233 million.

With me so far?

So where did this supposed ‘economic growth’ of £233 million come from? Did it come from growth in the private sector creating more jobs as the BBC ‘expert’ claimed. Nope. Unemployment was up compared to the same period the previous year. So, Sherlock, what could have caused the BBC’s and Guardian’s claimed 0.1% economic growth? It’s a mystery. Or is it?

Here’s a hint: the UK’s August 2026 public sector net borrowing was £18.3 billion, which was £2.9 billion (19.0%) higher than in August 2025 and £3.5 billion above the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) forecast.

So, our government borrowed £18.3 billion, £2.9 billion more than forecast. Most of this money probably went to pay off interest on previous borrowing. But some would have gone on paying for tens of thousands more illegal migrants, for tens of thousands more NEETs, for tens of thousands more fake disabled, for thousands more civil servants and on an inflation-busting 6.3% pay rise for public-sector employees.

Let’s assume that 90% of the borrowing in August went on debt repayments. That would leave £1.8 billion borrowed and then pumped into the economy. But this £1.8 billion only gave a supposed ‘economic growth’ of £233 million. That doesn’t look like real economic growth to me.

What I don’t understand his how the UK economy could be such a soon-to-be-bankrupt disaster when we have so many brilliant economists who don’t seem to have noticed this. But I guess there are many things in this world which an uneducated, intellectually-challenged, economically-illiterate ignoramus like myself will never be able to understand.