UK government debt now exceeds GDP

The Covid-19 pandemic has led to levels of UK government debt and borrowing unprecedented in the post-war era and the latest figures for government debt as a share of GDP reveal another grim economic milestone has been reached. As this infographic shows, general government gross debt equalled 103.6 percent of national GDP - far outstripping levels seen as a result of the 2008 financial crisis which peaked in 2014/15 at 84.9 percent of GDP.

Long gone are the low levels experienced at the beginning of the nineties where debt was almost four times lower when compared to GDP. This increase is of course not an exclusively UK problem. ONS data does show however that the UK is 12.3 percentage points above the EU average on this measure, leaving the UK in a better position than only Cyprus, Belgium, France, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece - the latter still struggling with debt at 207.2 percent of GDP.