Can Starmer and Reeves add some fizz to the economy?

If the 0.6 per cent first-quarter GDP uplift reported by the Office for National Statistics is sustained for the rest of this year, Rishi Sunak will be able to claim – as he waves goodbye – that he and Jeremy Hunt have succeeded against their naysayers in dragging the UK economy from pandemic depths back to the level of ‘trend growth’, around 2.5 per cent per annum, that used to be thought of as normal. That’s spookily in line (as is the path of inflation) with Ken Clarke’s achievement as Tory chancellor in 1996 ahead of the election that swept Blair and Brown to power the following May. How lucky is today’s untested, unloved and mostly unknown Labour front bench to be riding to power on a tsunami of anti-Tory sentiment in which a recovering economy, including rising real wages, apparently has no tangible impact on voters’ intentions?

Meanwhile, I’m intrigued by ONS chief economist Grant Fitzner’s claim that ‘you could say the economy is going gangbusters’.