One can hardly blame the government for seeking to convince voters that today’s GDP figures prove that we’re “on the right track“. Growth of 1 per cent in the third quarter, the highest quarterly growth rate since 2007, is superficially impressive (the bounce back from the bank holiday added around 0.5 per cent, while Olympic ticket sales added 0.2 per cent) and makes it easier for George Osborne to argue that the economy is “healing”.
But to borrow Cameron’s phrase from yesterday, the government shouldn’t assume “that the good news will keep coming”. A significant number of economists believe it is possible or even probable that the economy will contract in quarter four (in what our economics editor David Blanchflower has called a “triple-dip recession”). A combination of further spending cuts, rising energy prices, and recession in the eurozone means that growth is likely to remain anaemic or non-existent.
Vicky Redwood of Capital Economics, for instance, said:
As the Olympic effects unwind, it is still possible that the economy contracts again in Q4. Indeed, the business surveys have been painting a slightly gloomier picture, suggesting that underlying output is still stagnating or even falling slightly.
Chris Williamson of the data provider Markit, said:
The government will most likely make the most out of this good news, but unfortunately it is unlikely that the UK will see such a strong performance again for some time. In reality, the danger is that this figure fuels a misguided belief that the economy is on the mend, when in fact there is plenty of evidence to suggest that momentum is being lost again.
There is a real risk that a return to contraction might be seen again in the fourth quarter.
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The irony is that a slightly weaker figure in this quarter, by reducing the risk of a slump in Q4, might have suited the government more.
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