While Peter Mandelson faces questions over his EU connections, a different set of official figures reveals the economic earthquake that reshaped Britain during the pandemic years.

In 2017, Britain's labour market was humming along at 12.4 billion. By 2018, it had grown to 12.4 billion. The upward trajectory continued through 2019 (12.5 billion) and even into 2020 (12.5 billion), despite the first waves of COVID-19.

Then 2021 happened. The numbers didn't just fall. They collapsed. From 12.5 billion in 2020 to just 4.2 billion in 2021. A drop of 67%.

This isn't the story of gradual decline you might expect from recessions past. This is the labour market equivalent of falling off a cliff. In a single year, Britain lost two-thirds of its recorded economic activity.

The timeline tells the story of a country that thought it had weathered the worst. Through 2020, despite lockdowns and business closures, the official figures held steady. Furlough schemes and emergency support kept the numbers stable. The government's intervention appeared to be working.

But by 2021, the props had been pulled away. What remained was an economy that had fundamentally changed shape. The 8.3 billion drop between 2020 and 2021 represents the largest single-year contraction in the dataset's history.

This collapse happened while politicians were declaring victory over COVID-19 and planning for recovery. While headlines focused on vaccine rollouts and reopening dates, the labour market was experiencing its own quiet catastrophe.

The numbers raise uncomfortable questions about what actually sustained Britain's economy through the early pandemic. If 2020's figures were artificially propped up by government support, then 2021's collapse might represent the moment Britain's economy finally showed its true post-COVID face.

For context, this single-year drop is larger than the entire labour market was worth just a few years earlier. It's the equivalent of losing multiple entire sectors of the economy overnight.

The data suggests Britain's economic recovery story needs rewriting. This wasn't a gradual healing process. This was a country discovering just how much of its economy had been running on borrowed time. (Source: ONS, Labour market overview)