Does Sunak really think he is fooling anyone?

“Facts are facts” mumbled the Prime Minister on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, after being given a thorough going over by Nick Robinson. The remark came at the conclusion of a painful exchange between the two, in which the PM’s claim that the UK is growing faster than the US was exposed as a cheap trick. A sleight of hand. In other words, a lie.

The claim that Britain is outstripping the US is only true if you only consider a specific 3-month period during which the UK escaped from recession, and ignore everything else. But any honest comparison with the US shows up how appallingly bad our growth figures have been.

According to the House of Commons Library, UK GDP in the first quarter of this year was just 1.7% above its pre-pandemic level. This compares with Eurozone GDP being 3.4% higher (twice as good as the UK), a performance that would have been even better if the Ukraine War had not hit the German economy so hard.

The US had the highest growth rate among the G7 economies over this period at 8.7%. Sunak’s claim is therefore not credible.

Meanwhile the OECD, the Paris based international think tank, calculates that UK growth next year will be the lowest among the G7.

Rishi Sunak was chancellor of the Exchequer, has a first in PPE, an MBA from Stanford, and made a fortune in the City working for amongst others Goldman Sachs – he knows very well that his use of figures was selective to the point of being misleading. If he doesn’t know this was a complete misrepresentation of the facts, then who does?

Under his and previous Conservative prime ministers, the UK has underperformed in comparison with its previous growth rates and has performed badly against its economic rivals. The idea that we are outgrowing the sluggish US is a farcical suggestion that will have people at the Treasury rolling their eyes in exasperation.

More importantly, does Sunak really think he is fooling anyone? Does the average voter look at America, wonder at their poverty and thank the good Lord that they live in the prosperous, booming, and wealthy UK?

Of course they don’t, and the prime minister coming on the Today programme and lying to them about the state of the nation is not going to change their minds. Sunak likes to think that he is good at politics, but unfortunately for him he is pretty much alone in that opinion. Coming onto a major news programme with made up claims and dubious data is a recipe for disaster.

If this is all he has, it is going to be an embarrassingly bad election campaign, for him and the Tories.