A bad week to bury relatively good news from the economic front

The news agenda has gone mad. Imagine this is the issue of 27 October 1917, and our headlines are filled with allegations concerning the depravities of the late Mr Oscar Wilde, calls for a new enquiry into police handling of the 1888 Match Girls’ Strike, and rumours that Mr Bonar Law is habitually rude to servants — while reports of the first engagement of US infantry, a potential turning point in the war in France, are consigned to the inside pages. That’s more or less how it is today: analysis of what may be a turning point in the great economic war, at least on the domestic front if not on the more tumultuous European one, barely makes it into the bulletins at all.

But by the time you read this, the Office for National Statistics should have announced a growth bounce in the third quarter of up to 0.7 per cent.