The UK’s plummeting GDP cannot be saved simply by lifting lockdown

Consumer confidence is not something Boris Johnson can turn on and off, whatever some in the Conservative Party might think.

By Stephen Bush

Retail workers wearing PPE (personal protective equipment), including a face mask as a precautionary measure against COVID-19, exit a UNIQLO clothes store on Oxford Street in London on June 12, 2020, as non essential retailers, made to close due to the COVID-19 pandemic, prepare to re-open on June 15. - Britain's economy shrank by more than a fifth in April from March, official data showed Friday, as the first full month of coronavirus lockdown ravaged activity. Gross domestic product nosedived by a record 20.4 percent from the previous month, after a 5.8-percent contraction in March, the Office for National Statistics said. (Photo by DANIEL LEAL-OLIVAS / AFP) (Photo by DANIEL LEAL-OLIVAS/AFP via Getty Images)

Britain’s GDP fell by 20.4 per cent between March and April — the biggest monthly fall ever, wiping out the equivalent of the last 18 years of economic growth lost in a single month. This will increase the pressure on Boris Johnson from within the Conservative Party to end the lockdown in order to bring a halt to the economic damage.

The problem is that this argument for “ending” the lockdown is based on a flawed premise: that the lockdown and ensuing recession is something that was created in Downing Street; that Johnson woke up one morning and pulled a lever that sent us into the worst recession in three centuries.