As we approach the end of the year, it seems as good a time as any to reflect on how Rishi Sunak’s pledges on the economy in January have worked out for him and the ruling Conservatives.

Anyone with even a passing interest in the economy will, of course, know that it has been another dismal year. And the outlook is most unappealing. The spectre of recession looms.

So that all gives as good an indication as any of the answer to any question about whether the Tories have been doing a good job on the economy.

And it would be the same answer as that at any time since the Conservatives came to power in 2010.

But what of Mr Sunak’s pledges on the economy set out at the start of the year (which given the woeful state of things seem in some ways to have been made a lot longer ago than that)?

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These “pledges” and “promises” were framed by Mr Sunak as follows: “First, we will halve inflation this year to ease the cost of living and give people financial security.

“Second, we will grow the economy, creating better-paid jobs and opportunity right across the country.

“Third, we will make sure our national debt is falling so that we can secure the future of public services.”

There were two more pledges, one relating to NHS waiting lists and the other, utterly lamentably, about the Tories’ drive to “pass new laws to stop small boats”.

Focusing on the economic promises, firstly we should deal with the halving inflation pledge.

Annual UK consumer prices index inflation is less than half of the rate that was recorded in November 2022 - the latest month for which official figures were available at the time of Mr Sunak’s grandstanding speech in early January.

Annual UK consumer prices index inflation hit a 41-year high of 11.1% in October 2022, before dipping to 10.7% the following month.

It had by October this year fallen to 4.6%, and official figures last week showed annual CPI inflation dropped further to 3.9% in November.

Last month, in the immediate wake of the October inflation data being published, we had this post from Mr Sunak’s office on social media platform X: “In January, the Prime Minister @RishiSunak made halving inflation one of his top priorities. Today, that’s been achieved - with inflation now at 4.6%.”

So that’s all good on the Tories having delivered on that pledge then?

Some might be fooled into thinking that. However, it is not the case at all.

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It was inevitable inflation would fall sharply from incredibly high levels because of base-year effects.

You wonder if this inevitability was why Mr Sunak made halving inflation one of his pledges in the first place.

Furthermore, it is not the Conservatives who set monetary policy. The Bank of England sets interest rates with a mandate to keep annual CPI inflation at 2%. And it has independence in setting rates.

The Treasury sets the inflation target. However, the target has been unchanged since before the Conservatives came to power.

It is impossible, therefore, to fathom quite what Mr Sunak and his Tory colleagues think they have done to reduce inflation.

They have, however, been responsible for fuelling inflation with their hard Brexit.

This has brought skills and labour shortages, propelling pay rises higher. And sterling weakness has made imports far more expensive.

Brexit has sent food prices higher in the UK.

The Centre for Economic Performance (CEP) at the London School of Economics in May updated its analysis of Brexit’s impact on food prices.

The May paper from Jan David Bakker, Nikhil Datta, Richard Davies, and Josh De Lyon observed: “The cost of Brexit to each household now stands at £250 when only considering the impacts on food since December 2019. This aggregates up to £6.95 billion overall for UK households.”

So, all in all, Mr Sunak’s pledge on inflation was a nonsense from the outset. Yes, inflation is less than half of what it was but this is precious little to do with the Tories.

On to the second pledge to “grow the economy”, the reality on that front is clearly not convenient for Mr Sunak.

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The UK economy declined by 0.1% in the third quarter, revisions to official data on December 22 showed. And there was a 0.3% month-on-month fall in GDP in October. This followed stagnation in the second quarter, another sorry state of affairs revealed in the December 22 revisions by the Office for National Statistics.

The October GDP figures, published on December 13, prompted warnings from economists about the danger of recession. And the December 22 news on third-quarter GDP exacerbated fears of recession, defined as two consecutive quarters of falling economic output.

The drop in the UK’s economic output in October was broadly based, which is worrying.

On to the third pledge, what of Mr Sunak’s “we will make sure our national debt is falling so that we can secure the future of public services” proclamation?

Chancellor Jeremy Hunt was very upbeat indeed about this one in his Autumn Statement last month.

He declared on November 22: “Three of my Rt Hon Friend the Prime Minister’s five pledges at the start of the year were economic: to halve inflation, grow the economy and reduce debt. Today I can report to the House that we are delivering on all three.”

The actuality on the first two has been weighed earlier in this column.

Charity Full Fact analysed Mr Hunt’s November 22 claim that the Government was delivering on the Prime Minister’s pledge to reduce debt.

Full Fact noted: “The Prime Minister Rishi Sunak made a similar claim at PMQs (Prime Minister’s Questions) shortly before this, saying, ‘We have indeed reduced debt’.”

And, on Mr Hunt’s claim, the charity declared: “Whether or not this is correct depends on how you interpret the pledge the Prime Minister made this year regarding the national debt. Neither underlying debt nor overall debt has fallen in the past year. However both are forecast to begin falling as a percentage of GDP in the latter half of the decade.”

You would imagine many people might think the combination of what Messrs Sunak and Hunt have said on national debt indicates it is currently falling.

Of course, it is not.

It is difficult indeed to shake the impression that the Tories’ big talk on the economy, in the form of Mr Sunak’s “pledges” and the Conservatives’ claims about delivery on them, is no more than hot air.