During Friday's episode of Good Morning Britain, presenters Adil Ray and Kate Garraway had to abruptly pause their live broadcast to deliver some 'breaking news. '
Viewers were taken aback when the pair reported that the British economy had seen a slight growth of 0.1% between July and September, marking the first three months under the Labour government.
Kate expressed her disappointment with the outcome, labelling the figures as 'dreadful. ' Addressing the audience, Kate said: "Good morning, it's just after 7 o'clock and within the last few seconds well we have some breaking news."
She elaborated by pointing out: "Well the UK economy grew by 0.1% so some of the predictions of 0.2% but actually it is slightly worse and that is in the three months from July and September, so that is down from 0.5% in the previous quarter according to GDP figures released by the office for National Statistics at 7am."
When Shadow Chancellor Mel Stride joined the conversation, Kate remarked on the concerning trend: "Before we unleash you on how dreadful these gross figures are, it should be pointed out that previously it was 0.7 then 0.5 and now 0.1 so the gross was on the slide already under your government."
In response, Stride countered by saying, "Well no actually we handed over we had the fastest growth in the G7 and if you look at this recent number."
As he endeavoured to conclude his point, Kate interjected, highlighting: "But the numbers were going down is what I'm saying or are you disputing that?" To which the Shadow Chancellor responded by detailing the economic climate at the time of handover: "Well the point is when we handed over an economy that was growing at the fastest rate in the G7 so what we are seeing in these numbers of 0.1% increase is actually about half to 1/7 of the corresponding figures for economies like France, Germany and the United States."
He further remarked on the government's fiscal decisions: "The big question is why has this happened, well a big part of that is the government on first coming to office decided to go ahead with high increase in taxes so they spent that period in July to September actually saying how many problems they were and why they had to make tough decisions and ignoring the fact that we had a high growth."
