A Tory minister was openly laughed at after she claimed Rishi Sunak has “turned the economy round”.
Esther McVey, the minister for common sense, was speaking the day after it was revealed the UK has gone into recession.
Appearing on BBC Radio 4′s ‘Any Questions’ programme on Friday night, McVey said Tory MPs must rally round the prime minister despite the party’s latest humiliating by-election defeats.
She said: “People need to now get behind Rishi Sunak, who actually inherited a difficult set of circumstances and say ‘yes, he has turned the economy round - that is turning round now’.”
As the studio audience burst into laughter, presenter Alex Forsyth said: “Is it? The UK’s just gone into a recession.”
McVey replied: “Yeah, OK. Those figures were from the end of last year, and you’re right it was a technical recession and it’s a shallow recession.”
Figures released by the Office for National Statistics on Thursday showed that the economy shrank by 0.3% in the final three months of 2023.
With gross domestic product (GDP) also contracting by 0.1% between July and September, that meant the economy was officially in recession.
The data was a huge blow to Sunak, who has made growing the economy one of his five key pledges to voters.