Review of the quarter's economic trends [April 1981]

Present policies seem highly unlikely to return the UK economy to even the dismal growth path of the sixties and early seventies. This conclusion, unwelcome though it is, is made even more so by two additional factors. The first is the government's refusal to call their chosen strategy into question even in the face of an ever deepening recession and of a sustained logical onslaught on its theoretical underpinnings. The second is the absence of a coherent alternative strategy which carries the prospect of anything more than short-term amelioration of present problems. Further analysis of current UK economic conditions is provided, as too is an analysis of the world's economic performance