THE GUARDIAN: GDP in last three months of 2025 also hit by weak consumer spending, with little momentum going into this year
The UK economy expanded by only 0.1% in the final three months of last year, according to official data, as falling business investment and weak consumer spending led to little momentum going into 2026.
Figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show that the economy grew at the same rate of 0.1% as the previous three months. This was less than a 0.2% rise that economists had been expecting.
The economy grew by 1.3% in 2025, an improvement on growth of 1.1% in 2024, although worse than official forecasts of 1.5%. The ONS said the economy also expanded by 0.1% on a monthly basis in December, slowing from 0.2% in November – a figure that was revised down from 0.3%.
The rise came despite there being no growth at all in the dominant services sector, which makes up about 80% of the economy. The small boost was instead driven by the production sector, up by 1.2%, while the construction industry shrank 2.1%, its worst performance in four years, the ONS said. » | Tom Knowles | Thursday, February 11, 2026
We can thank that tw*t—use the vowel of your own choosing to replace the asterisk!—Nigel Farage for the UK’s sluggish growth in the last ten years. No economist worth his salt would recommend a nation to cut itself off from the Single Market — the biggest single market in the world! And a single market on the nation’s doorstep, to boot!
Boarding the nation’s dinghy and sailing around the world on the high seas looking for little trade deals here and perhaps bigger ones there is NOT going to fix the problem! The sooner that Starmer grows a pair and levels with the nation about this ongoing problem, the better. The process of rejoining the European Union needs to be started. Fact is, we should never have left the European Union in the first place. Brexit was always going to fail. It was Farage’s folly. The sooner this country turns its back on Brexit, the sooner it will start to achieve economically again. In this world of huge economic blocks, a shrunken empire like the United Kingdom’s otherwise doesn’t stand a chance. — © Mark Alexander
