The IMF thinks the UK will be the fastest growing economy in Europe.
That isn’t what the latest IMF projections show. Several European countries are projected to have higher GDP growth than the UK in 2025 and 2026. The UK economy is forecast to be the fastest growing among European countries in the G7, however.
“We’ve seen today […] from the IMF some signs that they think we’ll be the fastest growing economy in Europe”
Following new economic projections published by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) last week, we’ve seen a number of inaccurate claims about the UK’s forecast growth.
Full Fact’s AI tools identified a claim made by health minister Karin Smyth on BBC Radio 4’s Any Questions [26:50] that the UK is on track to become the “fastest growing economy in Europe”, while a headline published by the Independent similarly stated that the IMF forecast that the UK was “set to be the fastest growing European economy”.
But this isn’t what the recent IMF projections show. They forecast the UK’s GDP to increase by 1.6% in 2025 and 1.5% in 2026, but project that both Spain (2.3% and 1.8%) and Poland (3.5% and 3.3%) will have higher GDP growth in both years, while the Netherlands will have similar GDP growth in 2025 (1.6%) and higher growth in 2026 (1.8%).
It is true however that the IMF projects the UK will have higher GDP growth in 2025 and 2026 than the other European members of the G7 trading bloc (Germany, France and Italy). This was highlighted in comments from the Chancellor Rachel Reeves, who said: “The UK is forecast to be the fastest growing major European economy over the next two years”.
Ms Smyth’s office told Full Fact she misspoke, and had indeed intended to refer to”major” European economies, meaning those in the G7, while the Independent updated its headline after we got in touch.
The culture secretary Lisa Nandy also appeared to make a similar claim on 17 January on Times Radio, when she said: “We’re on track to be the fastest growing economy in Europe.”
It’s not entirely certain if Ms Nandy was referring to the IMF forecasts or some other data—we’ve contacted her office for comment and will update this article if we receive a response. But we’ve not seen any other such data to support her claim.
Ms Nandy made a similar claim earlier last week in relation to the latest projections of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), when she said: “The OECD is confident that we're on track to become the fastest growing economy in Europe.”
As we wrote at the time, that claim didn’t appear to be supported by the OECD’s projections. We’ve written to Ms Nandy about that claim asking her to correct the record.
If an MP makes a false or misleading claim on broadcast media they should take responsibility for ensuring it is appropriately corrected, and make efforts to ensure the correction is publicly available to anyone who might have heard the claim.
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