Britain is growing. Will Healey mess it up?

Michael Simmons

There are lots of reasons to seriously worry about the economy at the moment. The price of oil is surging, bonds are slumping (meaning yields are up again) and interest rate hikes are possible.

So it’s a relief to see this morning’s GDP figures, just published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), show Britain’s economy grew by 0.4 per cent in July. Most forecasts had predicted there’d be no growth at all.

Instead, strong growth in the services sector was enough to cancel out weaker figures in production and construction. Within services, the largest contributing industries were admin and support services with the ONS saying computer programming and consultancy too. According to statisticians, this seems to be evidence of AI contributing to growth in the British economy for the first time.

Over the three months to July, growth was also 0.4 per cent, down slightly from the 0.6 per cent which the economy grew in the three months to May. The World Cup and hot weather no doubt helped too. Add it all up and it means annualised growth is currently on track to hit 2.4 per cent.