Gordon Brown has made some radical changes to the counties monetary policies, he has given independence to the Bank of England and increased public spending while not increasing income tax. However, has the current government delivered on their promises?

The graph of UK output in service and manufacturing shows that Britain is fast moving in the service sector where there is a huge growth. In the manufacturing sector we see a very low growth and even beginning to decline from 2000.

The UK's economic trend follows quite closely with the rest of Europe mainly because of trade with Europe, however since 2002 there is a gap widening and the UK is performing a lot better than the rest of Europe mainly because of the slumping economies in France and Germany. Although at times the US and Japan have a higher growth rate than the UK, the British economy is a lot steadier whereas the US and to an even greater extent Japan go though a lot of boom and bust periods.

Inflation

There has been a steady fall the inflation since its peak in 1990. The RPI and RPIX (which doesn't include housing price) follow the same trend. The RPI index shows a more spiky rate due to the rise and fall of housing prices.

Since 1997 both the RPI and RPIX rate have been quite steady, in contrast with the huge rises and lows during the Tory government.

Unemployment

The unemployment rate has seen a steady fall since 1993. The claimant account is always lower than the labour force survey as it does not take into account those who are unemployed but not on benefits. The current government has done well in keeping the unemployment rate low as in 2002 the figure was the lowest for 25 years.

Trade

This is the one area when the government have not performed that well, since 1997 the balance of payment have been negative as we were borrowing more and importing more goods and services than exporting.