Starmer Unpopular - It's the Economy Stupid

I've recently heard various theories for why Keir Starmer is the "worst Prime Minister in living memory".  Is it his purging of the Labour left? Is it his taxes? Is it his lack of charm?  Is it his wooden persona?  Is it facilitating genocide?  Is it categorising grannies with cardboard signs as terrorists?  I have a theory that the driving factor is actually, as Bill Clinton would say "the economy stupid".  Britain's economy is supposedly bumping along the bottom with growth at 0.1% if the Bank of England's figures are correct.  Note that GDP figures are not always correct and are often revised retrospectively as their calculation is far from simple.  If the Bank's figures are 0.2-0.5% out we could have been in recession since the Sunak government which achieved at least one quarter of negative growth (two is an official recession).  If the primary driver of how people vote is the day-to-day economy, this would explain why Starmer is even more unpopular than John Major during his double-dip recession of the 1990s.

So how reliable are the BofE's figures?  Well, we know for a fact their inflation figures have been rubbish of late.  Recent internal and external reviews (see here and here) have shown that the government underestimated inflation during the post pandemic/ Ukraine invasion inflation shocks.  If it's underestimating inflation, it's probably calculating growth incorrect too.  Indeed they have been... So I wouldn't be surprised if someone pops up in a few years and tells us that actually the economy has been in recession after all (see here).  There certainly seems to me to be some disconnect between the Bank of England's statistics and my lived experience... At best we seem to be experiencing what Iain Macleod would describe as Stagflation - stagnant economic growth, high inflation and increasing unemployment... So ...

We all laughed at Liz Truss but her dash for "Growth Growth Growth" through deeply misguided and appallingly executed did at least correctly identify Britain's great problem ... Stubborn stagnation.  Since Brexit the economy has been seemingly stuck in a doom loop of near zero growth.  Hence various bungled attempts to give it CPR which fail to bring the patient back to life but give them a nasty shock before they return to a coma...  It is thought that Britain's hard Brexit far from provided £350m/week for the NHS actually shaved about 2% off GDP.  That's the difference between getting by and bumping along the bottom.  Last time we were here Ted Heath's solution was the Barber boom and...