There are few winners from today's shockingly bad GDP figures.

Certainly not the highly-paid City scribblers, who were all far too optimistic about a recovery. Nor Alistair Darling, who will have to rewrite his prediction of a revival starting in the summer.

If there is one small lucky group after a fall in GDP that was more than double that expected, it is home owners on lifetime tracker mortgages. The deeper the recession, the longer the Bank of England will keep its interest rate at 0.5 per cent.

So for those few on lifetime tracker mortgages, a group perhaps half a million strong - the prospect is for low mortgage bills for perhaps another three years.

The flip side of the coin of course, is savers, who will have to scrimp on meagre returns on investments.

The continuing slump will also raise unemployment. One in 10 workers looks set to lose jobs because of the recession.

Unemployment stands at 7.6 per cent or 2.38 million - up from 5.2 per cent or 1.63 million before the credit crunch struck two years ago.

But economists fear it could take five or even 10 years for it to fall back below two million. After the last recession ended in 1992, it kept rising for another year and did not fall below two million until 1997.

The scale of the downturn casts further doubt over the forecasts in the Chancellor's Budget in April.

Mr Darling predicted a slump of 3.5 per cent this year followed by growth of 1.25 per cent in 2010 and a bullish 3.5 per cent in 2011. He also forecast growth in the third or fourth quarters of this year.

But economists today warned that looked a long way off and said the recovery will be far more sluggish.

Mr Darling outlined borrowing of a record £175billion this year and £173billion next year, but this looks likely to hit £200billion and £185billion, according to analysts at Capital Economics.

The problem for any government that wants to cut public spending is that it risks plunging a recovering economy back into slump, creating the dreaded W-shaped recession.