U.K. recession deals fresh blow to Rishi Sunak’s economic promises

The United Kingdom slipped into a mild recession in the second half of 2023, showing Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has so far failed to meet his pledge to grow the economy.

Gross domestic product fell 0.3% in the fourth quarter, more than the 0.1% drop economists forecast, figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) released Thursday show. That followed an unrevised 0.1% decline in the previous three months, meeting economists’ technical definition of a recession, or two consecutive quarters of contraction.

While the economy still grew 0.1% across the year as a whole, it was the slowest annual expansion the U.K. had seen since 2009, excluding the first year of the pandemic. The U.K. economy last posted a quarter of growth in the first three months of last year.