BRITAIN has had the lowest gross national income per head compared with neighbouring European countries, analysis from the House of Commons Library reveals.
 
The analysis found neighbouring countries like Luxembourg, Norway, Ireland, Switzerland, Denmark, Netherlands, Sweden, Germany, Austria, Belgium, Finland and France had a higher gross national income per head than the UK.
 
The findings, which used data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), said the UK had a gross national income per head in 2021 of £41,000 while the equivalent statistic for Ireland was around £67,000.
 
SNP MSP Paul McLennan used the statistics to argue the case for Scottish independence. 
 
He said: “It’s increasingly clear that independence is the only way to unlock Scotland’s full economic potential — so we can be as wealthy and successful as our European neighbours.
 
“The UK is the poor man of north-west Europe — with the lowest wealth per head of any country for the whole of the 21st century, and a wealth gap with our European neighbours that has grown worse over the past two decades.”

A recent Financial Times analysis argued that Britain and the United States had become “poor countries with some very rich people,” noting that despite nominally high per capita GDP, inequality in Britain was so stark that people in the lowest income brackets are worse off than their equivalents in Slovenia, with the average Slovenian household due to be better off than the average British one by 2024 — and Polish families to enjoy higher living standards than British ones by 2030.

TUC general secretary Paul Nowak said: “The UK economy has been held back for over a decade by Conservative governments that have put wealth ahead of wage growth.