Gloomy OECD has to eat its own words

A LEADING global trade body yesterday raised its growth forecast for the British economy just weeks after warning Brexit could wreak similar damage to the Blitz.

Trimming its UK growth forecasts for this year from 1.6 per cent to 1.5 per cent, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development said leaving the EU remained the ‘major risk’.

But it raised its growth forecasts for the UK for 2018 from 1 per cent to 1.2 per cent.

Just six weeks ago the Paris-based group said the Blitz spirit would be needed for the UK to withstand departure from the EU.

Speaking at the time, OECD secretarygeneral Angel Gurria said: ‘What was that thing that Churchill said? Stay calm and carry on. This is as valid now as it was then in the Blitz.’ Brexit campaigner John Longworth, the former head of the British Chambers of Commerce, criticised the body, saying: ‘Like so many organisations who are institutionally anti-Brexit ... the OECD has talked down our economy again and again only to eat its words later.’

The OECD expects the UK economy to slow over the coming years, with growth easing from 1.8 per cent last year to 1.5 per cent this year, 1.2 per cent in 2018 and 1.1 per cent in 2019. It said: ‘The major risk for the economy is the uncertainty surrounding the exit process from the EU, which could hold back private spending more than projected.

‘However, prospects of maintaining the closest possible economic relationship with the EU would lead to stronger-than-expected growth.’