Introduction: The British Growth Crisis

Since 2007 the question of growth has plagued the British economy. Though, at the time of writing in the early summer of 2014, growth has returned, a pervasive anxiety about the solidity, stability and sustainability of that growth persists, even in the most hallowed of elite political circles. Thus, even the recently appointed Governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, is concerned that the short-term boost in economic output that has occurred since 2013 is a product of the re-stoking of an inherently unstable and, indeed, further de-stabilising housing bubble, much like that which burst to precipitate the crisis in the first place. Britain, even in his terms, would appear to be dancing on the edge of the precipice once again. For the much-vaunted ‘rebalancing’, presented as a necessary pre-condition of any return to a stable growth dynamic by the principal parties and the cornerstone of the Coalition’s economic policy rationale, has yet to materialise. By almost all available economic indicators the British economy is more unbalanced today than it was in 2007 (for a more detailed assessment of which see Berry & Hay 2014), and that gives a rather different complexion to the return to growth since 2013. Re-contextualised in this way it looks all too like the product of a rather desperate, short-term, and carefully targeted pump-priming of the housing market (using tools like the Coalition’s Help to Buy scheme).