In his book Great Britain? Torsten Bell – the recently appointed Treasury minister – tells a revealing tale. The slowdown in income growth, he writes, began around 2004, “but no one in government noticed until 2009, five years later. I remember the meeting at which it became clear what had happened, but by that point there were more immediate problems such as collapsing banks to worry about.”
Why did ministers miss the slowdown? “Because headline GDP growth remained strong right up to the financial crisis – averaging 2.8 per cent between 2000 and 2006.”
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