Did the Conservatives leave the ‘fastest growing economy in the G7’?

In the last few days we’ve seen a number of Conservative politicians, including Leader of the Opposition Kemi Badenoch at Prime Minister’s Questions yesterday, claim that their government left “the fastest growing economy in the G7”.

We’ve asked the Conservative party to confirm exactly what this is based on, and haven’t had a response. But a similar claim we looked at last year appeared to be based on combined GDP growth figures for the first two quarters of 2024.

Those figures did initially show that the UK had the highest GDP growth in the G7 over that period. But following revisions to the data, it now suggests by that measure that the UK had the joint-fastest growing economy in the first two quarters of 2024, alongside the United States.

The revised Organisation for Economic and Co-operation and Development (OECD) figures show that the UK economy grew by 0.7% in Q1 2024 and by 0.4% in Q2 2024, while the US economy grew by 0.4% in Q1 2024 and by 0.7% in Q2 2024. (In fact, it’s worth noting that unrounded figures show the United States had the slightly higher growth of the two over the two quarters).

Of course, there are different ways of measuring how fast economies are growing or forecast to grow, and we don’t know for sure what figures the Conservative claim is based on. We’ll update this blog if we hear back from the Conservative party. 

Meanwhile in Q3 2024, which broadly aligns with Labour’s first three months in office, the UK saw 0.0% growth. That is the joint-lowest rate in the G7 alongside Italy (though this figure too may be subject to revision in future, and the unrounded figures put Italy slightly behind the UK).

In its election manifesto Labour promised to “secure the highest sustained growth in the G7”. We’re monitoring progress against this pledge in our Government Tracker.