Theresa May is actually bragging about the Tories' lamentable economic record!

The Tory party propaganda machine is pumping out another new misrepresentation of their woeful economic record.

This time they're actually trying to brag that the UK economy has grown by "almost 17% since 2010" as if that's some kind of remarkable achievement, rather than an extraordinarily sluggish growth rate.

Here are four things you need to know about this highly deceptive new propaganda line from the Tories.

1. Under 17% growth in almost eight years is nothing to boast about at all. In fact, thanks to the global financial sector meltdown and the catastrophic effects of almost a decade of ruinous Tory austerity dogma, the UK has actually suffered an entire decade in which GDP growth has not exceeded 3.5% annual growth once, which represents the longest period of sluggish growth since reliable GDP growth records began in the 1950s.

The Tories are actually trying to present this record-breaking period of slow economic growth as some kind of brilliant success story!

2. The period of slow economic growth since the Tories came to power in 2010 actually equates to the slowest post-crisis recovery the UK has suffered since the time of the Napoleonic wars!

Economies usually bounce back after recessions like the 2007-08 bankers' crisis, but the application of ruinous Tory austerity dogma has caused the slowest post-crisis recovery in modern history, yet they're actually presenting this appalling failure as some kind of marvellous victory!

3. The latest GDP figures show a 0.5% growth rate for the final quarter of 2017, which is the 8th consecutive quarter in which the annual growth rate amounts to below 2%. This is the longest such run of sub-2% growth since the bankers trashed the global economy back in 2007-08.

Eight consecutive quarters of below 2% annualised growth is woeful stuff in the absence of a major economic crisis like the global financial sector meltdown of 2007-08, yet Theresa May and her chums want to trick you into thinking it's a success story!

4. The UK is suffering one of the lowest growth rates of the major world economies. At just 1.5% annualised growth, we're lagging behind Italy (1.7%), France (2.3%), The USA (2.5%), the Euro area average (2.6%),  Germany and Australia (2.8%), the Netherlands and Canada (3.0%) and Spain (3.1%). 

Bragging on about our economic growth rate when the UK economy is suffering one of the worst growth rates in the entire developed world, and growing at just 57% of the Eurozone average is a particularly Orwellian piece of reality-reversing Tory propaganda.

5. The economy may be experiencing very weak growth, but wages certainly haven't been keeping track. In fact the real terms value of average UK wages is lower today than it was 10 years ago. British workers have suffered the worst collapse in the value of their wages since records began, and Britain is the only country in the developed world where the economy has been growing but workers' wages have been collapsing.

Bragging that the economy has actually been growing a bit when they know that their obsession with hard-right austerity dogma has trashed the value of workers' wages in the same period is basically asking UK workers to celebrate the fact that the Tories are giving them incrementally smaller slices of the national wealth, even though the pie has actually been growing!

Beware of Tory propaganda

Other political parties that had overseen such an anaemic period of growth would probably try to change the focus of the political debate away from the economy and onto other things (the health service, security, education ...) but the Tories have such contempt for ordinary people like you and I that they actually believe that they can convince us that the record-breakingly slow growth and the unprecedented collapse in the real value of workers' wages that they have overseen are actually wonderful achievements to be celebrated and applauded!

Of course millions of tabloid-addled dupes will lap it up because they're unwilling/unable to critically appraise the figures that the Tories are trumpeting as wonderful successes, but hopefully they're outnumbered by those of us who can see through this kind of deceitful reality-reversing Tory propaganda.

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