What the latest data tells us about the Conservative claim that they left the UK with the ‘fastest growing economy in the G7’

In response last week to new GDP quarterly growth figures, Conservative shadow chancellor Mel Stride MP claimed on GB News and Sky News that when the Conservatives left office, the UK had the “fastest growing economy in the G7”.

We’ve heard similar claims from Conservative politicians a lot in recent months, and have previously asked the party to confirm exactly what it’s based on. We have asked the Conservative party again about Mr Stride’s most recent claim, but haven’t yet received a response.

One such 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. However subsequent revisions to the data, which we wrote about last month, suggested that the UK actually had the joint-fastest growing economy in the first two quarters of 2024 (up 0.7% in Q1 and 0.4% in Q2), alongside the United States (0.4% in Q1 and 0.7% in Q2). (In fact, unrounded figures showed the US had the slightly higher growth of the two over the two quarters).

Now, following further revisions, the latest data once again suggests the UK did indeed have the fastest growing economy in the G7 based on this measure (0.8% in Q1 and 0.4% in Q2), ahead of the US, the figures for which are unchanged.

Meanwhile, figures published last week by the Office for National Statistics estimate that the UK economy grew by 0.1% in Q4 2024, following 0.0% growth in Q3 2024 (broadly covering Labour’s first three months in government). The UK’s Q4 growth was the third highest in the G7 during this period (though note that data for Japan is not yet available).

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.