For a while it looked as if Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves were going to be lucky: they had walked into an economic recovery. The anaemic growth and market turmoil of the past few years – which Labour liked to blame entirely on ‘Tory chaos’ and absolutely nothing to do with the pandemic or energy crisis which followed the invasion of Ukraine – were going to be replaced by a period of stability and prosperity. Some governments are fortunate in their timing: Tony Blair walked into a decade of non-inflationary growth thanks to globalisation and the emergence of China as a major economy.
But Starmer, it now looks, will not be so lucky. The stock market slide which began on Friday has intensified this morning and is now beginning to look like a global correction, as traders fret that growth may not be as perky as previously hoped.
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