An appalling month for David Camer-on's gaffe-prone government took a turn for the worse this week with the revelation that the economy has not, after all, clawed its way clear of recession. Preliminary figures released on April 25th showed that gdp shrank by 0.2% in the first three months of 2012 (at an annualised rate of 0.8%), following a drop of 0.3% in the last quarter of 2011. When Britain emerged in 2009 from the deep recession that followed the financial crisis, the hope was that the economy had enough momentum to maintain a modest recovery, even while the fiscal deficit was being dealt with. But growth, never robust, has stuttered since the fourth quarter of 2010 (see first chart). Now it has stalled, leaving output lower than it was in late 2010.
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