Last week’s shrinking GDP figures were spun by George Osborne as due to the crisis in the €urozone. The decline in GDP could hardly be blamed on the US market which is picking up and growing at a respectable 2.8% last quarter, nor on Asian markets where China grew at an annualised 8.9% and India at 7.8%.

Is the decline in UK GDP really, as George Osborne implies, down to economic trade with the crisis ridden continent falling? The answer is no.

UK exports to €urozone states actually rose a healthy 11.3% last year:

It is a myth that the decline in GDP has anything to do with the €uro-crisis leading to a decline in exports to the €urozone. The barriers to growth are a domestic problem… 

A lot of chaff is being thrown up about the £10,000 tax threshold hike being pushed by Clegg this morning. Matthew Sinclair over at the Taxpayers’ Alliance has sent this chart proving the point Guido has been making all day. Those on low earnings benefit proportionately the most.

Those on lower earnings, e.g. the second decile (£10,853 according to ONS data) will see their post-tax earnings rise by 4.7%, those in the highest decile will see their post tax earnings rise by just 1.1%. Now some policy wonks on the left complain that middle income earners will see their post tax income rise by some 2% and that this is “a waste of money”. The squeezed middle-classes need some help as well, this is a good thing, not a flaw. The hike shouldn’t be paid for by once again shifting the higher rate threshold either. The coalition parties should stop piling on the pressure on the very demographic that voted them into office to cut taxes…

Guido’s blog reading co-conspirators are massive consumers of books, usually bought online courtesy of Amazon. According to the online retailer our reader’s favourite top purchases of 2011 were:

1. Let Them Eat Carbon: The Price of Failing Climate Change Policies
2. The Silent State: Secrets, Surveillance and the Myth of British Democracy
3. Zetter’s Political Companion
4. The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine
5. The Big Red Book of New Labour Sleaze
6. The Triumph of the Political Class
7. Human Action: A Treatise on Economics
8. Back from the Brink: 1,000 Days at Number 11
9. Ed: The Milibands and the making of a Labour leader
10. Dirty politics, Dirty times
11. The Rise of Political Lying
12. A Walk-On Part: Diaries 1994-1999 (Mullin Diaires 3)

E-editions and books were combined. Pugnacious Mehdi Hasan really should be less chippy given how many of his books Guido helps shift…

Newsnight gave Ed a pasting last night, but sometimes a graph is all you need. Left Foot Forward have hit the spot:

Half the country thinks he possess absolutely no qualities worth noting. Guido hears that CCHQ strategists have scrapped an attack on Ed’s leadership pencilled in for Friday morning, post by-election defeat…

Back in July the government won a vote to send £9 billion to the IMF by just 28 votes, the tightest margin yet for the Coalition government. Despite the best efforts of the whips some thirty-two Tory MPs rebelled against the government. With Osborne’s pledge today to increase British contributions to the IMF before the cash is sent on its way to Greece, an even trickier vote lies ahead:

Labour voted against the government last time and Guido can see no reason why they would change their vote next time. If you add the 81 EU rebels on the Tory benches to Labour’s vote the government will be defeated. There is some obvious panic in the Treasury as the realisation has dawned that if Ed Balls marches Labour through the no-bailout door followed by the Tory rebels, the government will lose. Excluding minor parties it will be 339 votes to 282 against more bailout cash.

There are more Tory €uro-rebels than LibDem MPs, yet it’s Clegg and the swivel-eyed Europhiles with their hands on the tiller…

Former Minister for Dirty Tricks Tom Watson thinks he can redeem his past sins on the back of pummelling Murdoch. The media are too terrified to say a negative word about him, so not for the first time it falls to Guido to highlight some hypocrisy ignored by the craven Old Media. A Labour Party press release in Watson’s name yesterday bleated:

“At a time when David Cameron is squeezing the income of millions of hard working families, he has decided to show off his grace and favour accommodation which he has lavishly and unnecessarily refurbished at the taxpayers’ expense. £30,000 of taxpayers’ money was reportedly spent on refurbishing the flat – more than most workers earn in a year… This is blatant hypocrisy and shows just how out of touch Cameron is.”

What our Tommy fails to mention, “wilfully” you might say, is that the refurbished flat will last far longer than Cameron’s premiership and will remain the property of the people. Unlike someone else’s lavishly fitted out residence…

The personal flat that Watson shares with fellow former Minister Iain Wright has seen them claim over £100,000 for refurbishments and such like for their pad including their shares of the legal costs involved in buying it, as well as the fees to buy the freehold. Unlike the PM he will be able to sell and keep the profit from his taxpayer feather-bedded nest. Interesting to note that Watson is suddenly willing to bring Cameron’s family into play. Given that the Watson clan have collectively taken £300,000 off the taxpayer you might wonder whether Tom is really one to be criticising anyone…

The most memorable sound-bite from Vince Cable’s speech will be his attack on his coalition partners and the right in general:

“What I will not do though is provide cover for ideological descendents of those who sent children up chimneys.”

Like his attack on “spivs” last year, this one will stick for all the wrong reasons. Who was it that brought an end to children being sent up chimneys? Lord Shaftesbury and his 1864 Act for the Regulation of Chimney Sweepers. Shaftesbury was a Tory. You would think Vince would remember voting on it…

A rare surplus in the public sector net cash requirement seems to have distorted the misery index, despite the gloom on the horizon and rising unemployment. Guido is definitely not happy, having just spent longer than ever necessary trying to navigate around the utterly shoddy, messy and overly complex new website for the Office of National Statistics, he’s in need of a drink. Another spectacular public sector IT success…

From now onwards the Misery Index will be bought to you using Bloomberg data.

N.B. Stats bods can check Guido’s adding up here.

There’s nothing more former Treasury spinner Will Straw and his band of merry progressives like doing more than talking down the UK. So eager are they for any chance to kick Osborne that they leave their flanks vulnerable. Their graph showing Britain’s tragically anaemic growth while tragic has unintended consequences for the tax and spenders. Have a look at the three countries leading the growth figures:

We on this blog are huge fans of the Baltic model, but apart from pretty blonde girls, what do Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania have in common? Well flat taxes of 24%, 25% and 33% respectively for one. Discuss…

With unemployment up by 38,000 to 2.49 million, the Misery Index is nearly at our most miserable this year. However the bad news isn’t all due to the rise in joblessness. The Public Sector Net Cash Requirement is not seasonally adjusted and is up considerably on last month. Either way we are 7 points more miserable then we were this time last year…

N.B. Stats bods can check Guido’s adding up here.