‘If it isn’t hurting, it isn’t working’ said another Tory Chancellor, Norman Lamont, at the height of another recession some 30 years ago. I remember it well, it was the only time in my life that I was made redundant, in the days before being made redundant became a part of most careers. And plus ça change, Jeremy Hunt, has seemingly given up on the next election and is happy to prescribe unemployment, repossessions and probably still-shorter life expectancies for those in certain postcodes, as a cure for inflation. As you may have gathered, it’s a view to which I do not wholly subscribe. In pretty much every recession, ever, the rich get richer, or at least stay as rich and it’s the poor and famously-squeezed middle who lose their jobs and homes. And it should not ever be thus.
“UK slips into recession as economy contracts 0.1% in December”
This week’s big economic and bad election news is that we are, or certainly have been, officially in a recession. You may not have thought you were, or you may have thought you have been for some time, as we and its effects are all different.
