Despite what the headlines will try to say, the economic growth last year merely puts the UK on par with most other Western Countries post-pandemic.
The UK had the highest fall in GDP and productivity given we were hit hard like Italy with the first wave of Covid.
Since then, the successful vaccine roll-out and some spirited determination to live with the virus rather than have constant lockdowns, has allowed the UK to play catch-up. Meanwhile, France and Germany have had a harder time with the later waves and so have not seen their economies re-bound as strongly.
Germany in particular is in a challenging position. It's main export market for manufacture is China and its main energy supplier is Russia. This is not a good geo-political place to be and there is no easy way out of this for Germany politically or economically.
Still, that the UK has recovered to near par is a good thing. However, the extra NHS spending, endless tax rises and interest rate rises are going to bake in a nasty downturn at some point, it is quite a way down from such high levels of growth but stagflation beckons for at least a year or two.
