A favourable comparison with Germany or France can make Britain's economic performance sound more reassuring than it feels. Sometimes the comparison is accurate. It still doesn't tell us whether this country is doing well enough by its own people.
The concern is weak investment and weak productivity, and what years of both have done to wages. Another country's difficulties don't make ours disappear.
What an hour of work produces
Productivity concerns how much output we can produce from our resources, including an hour of work. When it improves, there is more room for wages and living standards to rise. Britain's much weaker productivity growth since the financial crisis is therefore more than a disappointing line on a chart.
Comparisons with the pre-crisis trend illustrate the scale of the lost improvement. They aren't forecasts of what would certainly have happened. We shouldn't treat an extrapolated wage as money someone was guaranteed to receive. The gap nevertheless helps explain why people can feel they have worked through years of recovery without experiencing much progress.
Investment matters because better equipment, infrastructure, technology and skills can make work more productive. Weak demand and uncertainty can then discourage firms from making that investment, reinforcing the problem.
Growth for whom?
Population growth can increase the size of the economy without a comparable improvement in output per person. That doesn't establish that immigration causes stagnation. It means total GDP isn't sufficient evidence that the average person is becoming better off.
Tax receipts can rise without much underlying improvement too. Freezing thresholds while nominal wages increase brings more income into tax. It raises money, but it doesn't fix the conditions holding wages back.
These aren't reasons to ignore headline growth or the public finances. They are reasons to ask what is happening underneath them.
I would rather judge economic policy by whether people can produce more, earn more and afford a more secure life. That requires attention to investment and productivity, rather than a succession of comparisons chosen because another country happens to be struggling more.