Welcome Back to 2008

And so the long, long night has finally ended. Today we hear that the UK economy has finally regained all the ground it lost in the aftermath of the Great Recession. We're now officially all richer than we were in 2008.


But statistics aren't everything. As a country, our GDP is higher, yes. But that says nothing for all those people who were cast onto the scrapheap of unemployment during that time, either for a while or long-term. It says nothing for all those people who have remained stuck in jobs they don't really want to be doing, for fear of having nothing else. It says nothing for all those graduates (personal gripe here!) who left university to find the world didn't care as much as it said it did when they got into university. The true cost of the Great Recession is not over. It's hiding beneath the surface, and one day will emerge.

And with wages still lagging well behind GDP growth, very few of us are actually any richer than we were in 2008 anyway. This may be a day for politicians to trumpet the idea that Britain is back, or at least back on track. But remember this question:

Next Tuesday is Election Day. Next Tuesday all of you will go to the polls, will stand there in the polling place and make a decision. I think when you make that decision, it might be well if you would ask yourself, are you better off than you were four years ago? Is it easier for you to go and buy things in the stores than it was four years ago? Is there more or less unemployment in the country than there was four years ago?

Ronald Reagan, debating with Jimmy Carter, 1980