Rachel Reeves lands in Washington tonight to be greeted with bad news. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) – whose spring meeting the Chancellor is attending – has just handed Britain the largest GDP downgrade of any G7 country. 

In the freshly released update to their world economic outlook, the IMF forecast growth for the UK this year of just 0.8 per cent – down from the 1.3 per cent they’d previously projected. Things don’t get much better next year either, with just 1.3 per cent growth forecast, again downgraded from 1.5 per cent. 

This downgrade singles out Britain and our European neighbours. While the IMF calls the overall effect of the conflict in Iran on growth in advanced economies ‘modest’, they warn of a ‘large negative........

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